Photo credit – NASA – Public Domain
Photo credit – NASA – Public Domain
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photo credit: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson
Photo credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)
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Anyway, I think these are great pictures and I’m providing links where you can get further information and higher resolution copies of them. Enjoy. Image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4.
rjb
Photo credit – Simon Eugster
altocumulus-©-Gi-Gi
Like stratocumulus, altocumulus is an unassuming cloud. It’s only there because there happens to be enough water vapor in the air to condense out into water droplets. As the temperature drops with altitude, it eventually reaches the dew point and clouds form. Altocumulus has a lumpy appearance because of mild convectivity, but it has minimal vertical development. There’s no drama, other than the visual drama that can come with the right lighting. There’s no threat of exciting weather and precipitation is rare. Altocumulus are just clouds.
rjb
Photo credit – © Francois Paris
Stratus doesn’t have the identity crisis of stratocumulus. While stratocumulus has features of both layer and cumulus (heap) clouds, but is really neither, stratus is a layer cloud all the way. Forming in calm, moist air, stratus has virtually no definition to it. It is so uniform and featureless that weather observers have difficulty determining the height of its base by eye alone. They have to release a balloon and, knowing its ascent rate, time its disappearance into the cloud. Or they could use an instrument such as lidar.
Photo credit: Nicholas_T / Foter / CC BY
Precipitation can come from stratus, usually as drizzle or a dusting of snow grains, but it’s only because the air is so moist, rather than because of any real weather activity.
rjb
ISBN 978-0-9919532-0-2
