What happens to cause cloud and fog formation?

Question

What happens to cause cloud and fog formation?

Answer 1

a cloud and fog are actually the same thing. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold can. When the warm moist air either begins to cool or meets colder air the moisture condenses into droplets, they aren't large enough to fall as precipitation, such as rain, or snow so they stay suspended. Any light reflects off them, and depending on whether it is near ground or in the sky it's either a cloud or fog.

Answer 2

Moisture in the atmosphere.

Answer 3

The key word here is dew-point.  Give me a sec to get my thoughts straight.

Air, like a sponge, can only hold so much moisture.  Kind-of the way they measure this is to take a fictuous block of air called a "parcel" - lets say 1 mile square - like a square box with one mile on each side.

This particular box can only hold so much moisture just like a particular box sponge can only hold so much moisture before it starts to drip.

When the sponge gets enough moisture in it that it starts to drip - that would be kind-of the due point in comparison to our air.

When you have a block of air "parcel" with whatever size you want - 1 mile on each side of the block - 10 miles on each side of the block - whatever - there are a couple of important factors that can affect this "parcel" of air or "sponge of air" to hold water - barometric pressure and temperature.

As the barometric pressure increase - you kind-of squeeze the sponge more and as the temperature gets colder - you kind-of squeeze the sponge even more.  For the sake of a certain block of air - we will assume the barometric pressure will be approx the same.  In this way - the major factor is the temperature.

The dew point (or dewpoint) is the temperature to which a given parcel of air must be cooled, at constant barometric pressure, for water vapor to condense into water. The condensed water is called dew. The dew point is a saturation point.

The dew point is associated with relative humidity. A high relative humidity indicates that the dew point is closer to the current air temperature. If the relative humidity is 100%, the dew point is equal to the current temperature. Given a constant dew point, an increase in temperature will lead to a decrease in relative humidity.

At a given barometric pressure, independent of temperature, the dew point indicates the mole fraction of water vapor in the air, and therefore determines the specific humidity of the air.

The dew point is an important statistic for general aviation pilots, as it is used to calculate the likelihood of carburetor icing and fog.

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If you look up at the clouds some day, it looks like the base of all the clouds is at the same level.  

The temperature decreases with altitude at approx 41/2 degrees F for every 1000 feet.  The base of the clouds is where the temperature as decreased to where the "sponge" is squeezed to the point of dripping (clouds).

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Lets get to fog

At night, when the sun is not shining, the ground can become colder than the surrounding air.

As the air is in contact with this colder ground, the temperature of the air in this general area up to about 1000 feet starts to get colder cause of the cold ground.

Once this air gets cold enough to reach the dew point - the point where it can't hold the moisture within it - it precipates into a cloud.

Fog = Cloud.  Fog just happens to be a cloud on the ground.  W/o the sun shining it looks like fog but get above it with the sun out and it is a cloud.

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A cloud is formed as the temperature decreases with altitude - at a certain height - the air cannot hold any more moisture and it precipitates in the form of a cloud (high fog).

Clouds are formed when air comes in contact with either air a surface that is cooling by radiation or a cold surface. The air then is cooled below it's saturation point. Therefore clouds can be formed along cold and warm fronts. Clouds can also be formed at the side of a mountain.

The air will then cool as it rises higher into the atmosphere.Clouds can also be formed by the convection caused due to the warming of a surface by insolation.Clouds are therefore formed due to the cooling of water vapor in the air, and its condensing as part of the water cycle. Clouds consist of millions of water droplets as well as ice crystals.

These water droplets assume various shapes and sizes and float around. Cloud formation also take place when warm air blows over a cool surface or body, cold water is a perfect example for such types of cloud formations. Cloud formation takes place when two air bodies which are below the saturation point mix. One another reason of cloud formations is the absorption of more water vapor by air while remaining at the same temperature.

Answer 4

Condensation of water vapour into tiny water droplets in the presence of what is called condensation nuclei in the atmosphere produces clouds.This happens when the air temperature comes down to the dew point temperature.

Fog also forms in the same way but forms over or near the surface.Infact,fog is nothing but cloud on ground.

Answer 5

when water evaporates it forms water vapor and then the form water droplets and they get bigger and form clouds