This document discusses various types of cloud formation and precipitation processes. It describes adiabatic temperature changes that can occur without heat exchange, as well as orographic and frontal lifting caused by air flowing over elevated land or cooler air. It defines convergence as air flowing together to cause lifting. It also outlines high, middle, and low cloud types, as well as vertical cloud development. Processes like condensation, the Bergeron process, and collision-coalescence are discussed in relation to cloud precipitation. Rain, snow, sleet, glaze and hail are also defined.

1. Dan Manns

2. Adiabatic temperature changes
and expansion and cooling
 When temperature changes even
though there has been no changes to
the heat.
 It happens because air gets compressed
and is allowed to expand.

3. Orographic lifting
 Orographic lifting is when elevated land,
like mountains, act like a barrier to air
flow.

4. Frontal wedging
 Frontal wedging is when cooler, denser
air acts as a barrier over which the
warmer less dense air rises.

5. Convergence
 Convergence is whenever air in the
lower atmosphere flows together lifting
results.

6. Localized convective lifting
 Pockets of air being warmed more than
the surrounding air.

7. Stability
 If a volume of air was forced to rise, its
temperature would drop because of
expansion.
 If this volume of air was cooler than the
surrounding environment, it would be
denser, and if allowed to do so, it would
sink to its original position.

8. Condensation
 When water vapor in the air changes to
a liquid.

9. Types of clouds
 Types of clouds are based on their
shape and height
 Cirrus
 Cumulus
 Stratus

10. High clouds
 There are three high cloud types:
 Cirrus
 Cirrostratus
 cirrocumulus

11. Middle clouds
 Middle clouds are about 2,000-6,000
 All middle clouds have alto before their
name.

12. Low clouds
 Stratus clouds are the clouds that
usually cover most of the sky.
Sometimes they produce precipitation.
 Nimbostratus create most of the
precipitation.

13. Clouds of vertical development
 Clouds of vertical development have low
bases but extend upward.

14. Fog
 Fog is physically the same as a cloud.
 Fog is the result of radiation cooling or
the movement of air over a cold surface.
 Fog is on the ground.

15. Cold cloud precipitation (Bergeron
process)
 The Bergeron process relies on
supercooling and supersaturation.
 Water that is below o degrees Celsius is
supercooled.
 When air is saturated it is
supersaturated.

16. Warm cloud precipitation
 In warm clouds, clouds are formed by
the collision-coalescence process.
 Some water absorbing particles can
remove water vapor from the air when it
is not saturated.

17. Rain and snow
 Rain is a drop of water that falls from a
cloud and has a diameter of at least 0.5
mm.
 When the temperature is low, snow is
made up of six sided ice crystals.

18. Sleet, glaze, and hail
 Sleet is particles falling of clear ice.
 Glaze happens when raindrops become
supercold.
 Hail is smalls ice pellets.