This document discusses different types of clouds and precipitation. It explains processes like adiabatic temperature changes that cause clouds to form. Specific cloud types are defined, like cirrus, cumulus and stratus clouds. Factors that influence cloud formation are also outlined, such as orographic lifting when air rises over mountains and frontal wedging when warm and cold air collide. The document also covers different forms of precipitation like rain, snow, sleet and hail.

1. CLOUDS AND PRECIPITATION
By Xioana Morales Marquez

2. END
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3. ADIABATIC TEMPERATURE CHANGES AND
EXPANSION AD COOLING
 Adiabatic temperatures are temperatures
that change without heat being added or
taken away
 They happen when ‘air is compressed or
allowed to expand
 For example, and airplane when you lift
off the ground and go higher into the
Earth’s atmosphere your ears pop
 This happens because of the vast
decrease in pressure which occurs by the
few gas molecules.
 In result, the belaying air expands and
cools down.

4. OROGRAPHIC LIFTING
 This is when mountains and other elevated lands
disrupts the natural air flow
 When you look at a mountain and you see the
progressing difference in land features and
towards the top you see whiteness
 This is because as you go higher into the
atmosphere adiabatic cooling happens.

5. FRONTAL WEDGING
 Is when a blast of cold air and warm air collide and
make a ‘front’
 this creates wild storms and even tornadoes
 In theory the cold air acts as a bottom wedge and
hot air acts as a top wedge
 This happens because the more dense the air is
the more the air is brought down to the bottom of
the atmosphere

6. CONVERGENCE
 Is when the air on the lower part of the atmosphere
flow and move together to lift itself up higher into
the atmosphere
 As an example, in Florida when the warm air from
the ocean to land, and the structure of the state
being a peninsula the warm air comes from both
sides of the land causing convergence to happen

7. TYPES OF CLOUDS
 Cirrus, Cumulus, and Stratus are the
three main basic types of clouds
 Cirrus is a more curl than plum shape of
cloud they have a feathery effect to them
 Cumulus are clouds that are more round
and full they appear more on fair days
 Stratus are the clouds that have a light
gray kind of color to them, the kind of
clouds that tell weather it would rain
today or tomorrow

8. HIGH CLOUDS
 Cirrus, Cirrostratus, and cirrocumulus kind of clouds
make up high clouds
 Are figured as small but fluffy massed clouds, thin,
pure white and made up of ice crystals
 They increase sky coverage and are more likely a
warming sign that a storm like weather would be
approaching.

9. MIDDLE CLOUDS
 Appear in the middle range of the sky from 2000-
6000 meters high
 Altocumulus clouds are made or figured as more
full, rounded clouds
 They are slightly larger then the high clouds
 They bring small showers or rain and or snow

10. LOW CLOUDS
 Stratocumulus, stratus,
and nimbostratus make
up as members of the
low cloud family
 They are more of a faint
kind of cloud meaning
the nimbostratus cloud is
more of the rain cloud
then either of them

11. CLOUDS OF VERTICAL DEVELOPMENT
 Sometimes there are
clouds that don’t even
correspond to any of the 3
types and levels
 These clouds are very
much related to each other
by being associated with
unstable air

12. FOG (BY COOLING AND BY EVAPORATION
 As a clearance there is absolutely no
difference in a cloud and fog, they are
generally the same in logical sense
 When it’s late at night and all weather is
calm a thin layer of air collects near the
ground, which process soon turns to
condensation
 As the air cools and the more denser the
cooled air is in lower terrains, is where fog
builds by cooling
 Although fog that is made by evaporation
is just cool air that moves over warm
water, when the water vapor meets the
cold air it condenses and rises with
warmed air

13. COLD CLOUD PRECIPITATION
 Involves the Bergeron process
 Counts on two major Processes super-
cooled and supersaturated
 to be super-cooled water in the liquid state
would have to be -40 degrees, meaning
when it takes impact to an object it freezes
 To be supersaturated ice crystals can’t have
any approach to water vapor due to the way
ice crystals are saturated

14. WARM CLOUD PRECIPITATION
 Involves the collision-coalescence
process
 Is when rain droplets go through clouds
with they water absorbing particles, the
cloud being well below freezing
temperatures
 the slat in the rain droplets remove
water vapor making the relative
humidity drop lower than 100%
 So as rain droplets move through the
cloud they hit other smaller droplets
making them together drop down.

15. RAIN AND SNOW
 Have a lot in common as rain
droplets are produced in the cloud,
the temperature that in well below
freezing makes the rain turn to snow
before it falls
 The snow on the other hand, known
as the rain, melts as it’s falling but
only when the surface temp is at least
4 degrees Celsius

16. SLEET, GLAZE AND HAIL
 Sleet is a form of air that
temperatures are above freezing, and
lay over a subfreezing layer near
towards the ground
 Glaze is when rain drops become
‘super-cooled’ as they fall from the
sky, hit the ground and turn to ice on
instant impact
 Hail is made in cumulonimbus clouds,
as small pellets grow bigger they find
a strong ‘up-draft’ and is carried down
to the ground