What is a cloud? how do they form?

Question

Where do clouds come from? What are they made of?

Answer 1

Please see the link below

Answer 2

Very simply, a cloud is "FOG" that is above the Earth's surface, rather than in contact with the ground.

Clouds and fog are one and the same thing, which is very tiny droplets of condensed water, so small that they do not have enough weight to fall to the Earth, and consequently they just float around in the air.

IF and when enough of these droplets of condensed water vapor, collide and stick together, they become heavy enough for gravity to cause them to fall to Earth, and that is what we call rain.

Answer 3

a cloud is formed when water is evaporated by the sun

Answer 4

The sun evaporates the water and a bunch of evaporated water forms and creates a cloud. So clouds are evaporated water.

Answer 5

A cloud is an aggregate of very small water droplets,ice crystals, or a mixture of both with its base above the earth's surface.It is formed in the following way.

Normally air contains some water.it is usually in the form of an invisible gas called water vapour.When warm air rises, it expands and cools.Cold air can not hold as much water vapour as warm air.So,some of the water vapour condenses over tiny pieces of dust(called condensation nuclei) that are floating in the air and forms tiny water droplet around each dust particle.Millions of such droplets come together to form a visible cloud.

Answer 6

A cloud is a visible mass of droplets or frozen crystals floating in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. A cloud is also a visible mass attracted by gravity (clouds can also occur as masses of material in interstellar space, where they are called interstellar clouds and nebulae.) The branch of meteorology in which clouds are studied is nephology.

Answer 7

a cloud is a aggregation of minute particles of water or ice suspended in the air.

Formatoin of Clouds

Clouds are formed when air containing water vapor is cooled below a critical temperature called the dew point and the resulting moisture condenses into droplets on microscopic dust particles (condensation nuclei) in the atmosphere. The air is normally cooled by expansion during its upward movement. Upward flow of air in the atmosphere may be caused by convection resulting from intense solar heating of the ground; by a cold wedge of air (cold front) near the ground causing a mass of warm air to be forced aloft; or by a mountain range at an angle to the wind. Clouds are occasionally produced by a reduction of pressure aloft or by the mixing of warmer and cooler air currents

Classification of Clouds

A classification of cloud forms was first made (1801) by French naturalist Jean Lamarck. In 1803, Luke Howard, an English scientist, devised a classification that was adopted by the International Meteorological Commission (1929), designating three primary cloud types, cirrus, cumulus, and stratus, and their compound forms, which are still used today in modified form. Today's classification has four main divisions: high clouds, 20,000 to 40,000 ft (6,100–12,200 m); intermediate clouds, 6,500 to 20,000 ft (1,980–6,100 m); low clouds, near ground level to 6,500 ft (1,980 m); and clouds with vertical development, 1,600 ft to over 20,000 ft (490–6,100 m).

High cloud forms include cirrus, detached clouds of delicate and fibrous appearance, generally white in color, often resembling tufts or featherlike plumes, and composed entirely of ice crystals; cirrocumulus (mackerel sky), composed of small white flakes or very small globular masses, arranged in groups, lines, or ripples; and cirrostratus, a thin whitish veil, sometimes giving the entire sky a milky appearance, which does not blur the outline of the sun or moon but frequently produces a halo.

Intermediate clouds include altocumulus, patchy layer of flattened globular masses arranged in groups, lines, or waves, with individual clouds sometimes so close together that their edges join; and altostratus, resembling thick cirrostratus without halo phenomena, like a gray veil, through which the sun or the moon shows vaguely or is sometimes completely hidden.

Low clouds include stratocumulus, a cloud layer or patches composed of fairly large globular masses or flakes, soft and gray with darker parts, arranged in groups, lines, or rolls, often with the rolls so close together that their edges join; stratus, a uniform layer resembling fog but not resting on the ground; and nimbostratus, a nearly uniform, dark grey layer, amorphous in character and usually producing continuous rain or snow.

Clouds having vertical development include cumulus, a thick, detached cloud, generally associated with fair weather, usually with a horizontal base and a dome-shaped upper surface that frequently resembles a head of cauliflower and shows strong contrasts of light and shadow when the sun illuminates it from the side, and cumulonimbus, the thunderstorm cloud, heavy masses of great vertical development whose summits rise in the form of mountains or towers, the upper parts having a fibrous texture, often spreading out in the shape of an anvil, and sometimes reaching the stratosphere. Cumulonimbus generally produces showers of rain, snow, hailstorms, or thunderstorms

Answer 8

Water is evaporated in the air as a gas.  When the humidity goes above 100 percent, it turns into water.  The cloud is tiny droplets of water or ice.