Talk:Cloud - Misplaced Pages

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High cloud heights

Both the Canadian MANOBS and say that high clouds can form lower in polar regions. CambridgeBayWeather 09:15, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Cloud article names

I the blue of the sky then I would say that it's Cirrus. The larger cloud mass above it (in the picture) may well be Cirrostratus but it woukld think that it's Altostratus. It appears to be lower in the sky than the centre Cirrus and looks a little too dark to be Cirrus. If you look at the bottom right just above the tree tops, there appears to be a third cloud. This could be a fractus of lower cloud or ACC forming. There's no way to judge the hight of it. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Nature claims 5 errors

Nature of this article; see http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/multimedia/438900a_m1.html and Misplaced Pages:Nature. We're hoping they will provide a list of the alleged errors soon. —Steven G. Johnson 01:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

So what! :P - Hard Raspy Sci 04:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

publication that's what!--Deglr6328 22:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Errors ID'd by Nature, to correct

Nature suggested should be corrected is out... italicize each bullet point once you make the correction. -- user:zanimum

Under 'Cloud formation and properties', cloud formation happens when air is cooled below its saturation point, not to its saturation point.
Under 'Cloud formation and properties': 'The air stays the same temperature but absorbs more water vapour into it until it reaches saturation'. No. Droplet or ice particle formation requires supersaturation. Water vapour can only be added to bring the air to saturation.
Omission: Cloud can however be formed by the mixing of two subsaturated air masses. Examples of this are “breath” condensation on a cold day, arctic sea-smoke and aircraft contrail formation.
'This method of raindrop production … typically produces smaller raindrops and drizzle'. Tradewind and tropical cumulus clouds are capable of producing drops of several millimetres in diameter.
Under 'clouds in family A': A contrail is a long thin cloud which develops as the result of the passage of a jet airplane at high altitudes. (any type of aircraft is capable of forming a contrail – not just jets. They result when mixing of the engine exhaust which contains unsaturated water vapour mixes with the unsaturated environmental air to produce a mixture which becomes temporarily saturated).

Why do cloud droplets not display rainbows?

When a cloud is composed of droplets, why don't they show as a rainbow when seen from the right direction? Are the droplets too small (compared to light wavelength)? I have a photo where a rainbow seems to be partly hidden behind clouds. (It was cold that day, almost freezing.) Abu ari 09:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I would say because the water droplets are too densely packed. For an ideal rainbow to form, each light ray must be refracted by one, and only one, water drop. If a lot of the light makes it through without hitting a water drop, then you will get a pale rainbow. If each light ray is refracted by multiple drops of water, the colors will be randomly distributed all over the sky, with the net effect being white (or black if there are so many droplets that they actually absorb the light). Notice that you don't see rainbows in the midst of a serious rainstorm, either. StuRat 12:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I see. Only a thin layer on the sunny side of the cloud is exposed to direct parallell rays from the sun. That layer does form a rainbow, but because the layer is thin, the intensity of the rainbow is too low to be seen. Abu ari 09:24, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Wrong. It's because of diffraction, because the droplet size is too small. The best rainbows are caused by large raindrops, and as the raindrop size decreases, the colors blend together and numerous diffraction stripes appear within the curve of the rainbow. See cloudbow --Wjbeaty 03:26, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, without putting in numbers, it must be diffraction, due to the small size of the drops. The drops can't be too densely packed or the cloud would fall. A rainbow is a geometric optics effect involving reflection and refraction. Cloud particles are too small to be well described by geometric optics, as rain, and too large to be well described by Raleigh scattering, as air. (Since liquid cloud droplets are nearly spherical, they are well described by the Mie series). There are colored rings around the sun due to thin clouds. This may be a diffraction effect, more like Raleigh scattering. David R. Ingham 18:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Colors of clouds

I am not convinced that the explanation of dark clouds is correct. At best it is incomplete. David R. Ingham 17:44, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Some questions that the article could include

Here are some questions that I feel the article could answer a little more explicitly: - Why is there a layer of clear air between a cloud and the ground? - Why do water clouds have very sharply defined edges? - Why are the bottoms of cumuliform clouds pretty flat and uniform, when the tops are lumpy? - Why is there liquid water in clouds that reside in air up to 30 degrees below freezing? Some of the answers are hinted at, others aren't answered at all, but I think all are good questions, worthy of an answer in this article. Annihilatenow 11:09, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Contrail dispute

I don't think that contrail should be listed along with the naturally occuring cloud formations in this article. It is a form of pollution, more akin to smog than to true clouds. — Morganfitzp 02:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Banner clouds

I came to know of banner clouds from Talk:Matterhorn. There is also a link to a photo of a banner cloud in the discussion there. But I couldn't get any info on a banner cloud in this article or a mention of it in List of cloud types. Is there a technical name by which banner clouds are known ? Jay 08:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Introduction

This is the first paragraph of the introduction as of 11/09/2006:

"A cloud is actually an assortment of dead jews this comes from WW2 times. Before this there were no clouds and afterwords clouds were there thanks to the burning dead jews.droplets jew tears or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. The branch of meteorology in which clouds are studied is nephology."

I have no wiki experience, and I am not an expert nephologist by any means but this definition is ridiculous. If someone who has a greater scientific knowledge than myself has the time to offer a founded, definition for a cloud (or revert the vandalism) I think the article would be better for it. ngschmidt

Rename this article to Nephology?

Hi. Since this article is studying clouds, would it seem reasonable to rename this article to Nephology, with Cloud redirecting to it? Or perhaps rename the cloud disambiguation page to Cloud which would then include a link to Nephology? --Rebroad 23:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this is not a great idea. Virtually all the people who want to find out about clouds will search for "cloud". I see no point in making this a redirect. I would suggest that rather some mention be made in the article that the study of clouds is called nephology. Denni 23:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

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