how mant types of clouds are there?
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Four general types, and a few subcategories of those:\n\nLatin Root \ncumulus \nstratus\ncirrus\nnimbus\n\nHigh-Level Clouds \nCloud types include: cirrus and cirrostratus. \nMid-Level Clouds \nCloud types include: altocumulus, altostratus. \n\nLow-Level Clouds \nCloud types include: nimbostratus and stratocumulus. \n\nClouds with Vertical Development \nCloud types include: fair weather cumulus and cumulonimbus. \n\nOther Cloud Types \nCloud types include: contrails, billow clouds, mammatus, orographic and pileus clouds.
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Clouds are formed when water vapour in the air is cooled and condenses as part of the water cycle. Clouds consist of billions of tiny water droplets (and even ice crystals) floating in the sky and appear in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on how and where they formed.
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Clouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. This can happen in three ways.\n\n1. The air is cooled below its saturation point. This happens when the air comes in contact with a cold surface or a surface that is cooling by radiation, or the air is cooled by adiabatic expansion (rising). This can happen\n\nalong warm and cold fronts (frontal lift), \nwhere air flows up the side of a mountain and cools as it rises higher into the atmosphere (orographic lift), \nby the convection caused by the warming of a surface by insolation (diurnal heating), \nwhen warm air blows over a colder surface such as a cool body of water. \n2. Clouds can be formed when two air masses below saturation point mix. Examples are breath on a cold day, aircraft contrails, and Arctic sea smoke.\n\n3. The air stays the same temperature but absorbs more water vapor into it until it reaches saturation.\n\nThe water in a typical cloud can have a mass of up to several million tonnes. However the volume of a cloud is correspondingly high, and the net density of water vapor is actually low enough that air currents below and within the cloud are capable of keeping small droplets suspended. As well, conditions inside a cloud are not static: water droplets are constantly forming and re-evaporating. A typical cloud droplet has a radius on the order of 1 x 10-5 m and a terminal velocity of about 1-2 cm/s. This give these droplets plenty of time to re-evaporate as they fall into in the warmer air beneath the cloud.\n\nMost water droplets are formed when water vapor condenses around a condensation nucleus, a tiny particle of smoke, dust, ash, or salt. In supersaturated conditions, water droplets may act as condensation nuclei.\n\nWater droplets large enough to fall to the ground are produced in two ways. The most important is through the Bergeron Process, theorized by Tor Bergeron, in which supercooled water droplets and ice crystals in a cloud interact to produce the rapid growth of ice crystals, which precipitate from the cloud and melt as they fall. This process typically takes place in clouds with tops cooler than -15°C. The second most important process is the collision and wake capture process, occurring in clouds with warmer tops, in which the collision of rising and falling water droplets produces larger and larger droplets, which are eventually heavy enough to overcome air currents in the cloud and the updraft beneath it and fall as rain. As a droplet falls through the smaller droplets which surround it, it produces a "wake" which draws some of the smaller droplets into collisions, thus perpetuating the process. This method of raindrop production is the primary mechanism in low stratiform clouds and small cumulus clouds in trade winds and tropical regions, and produces raindrops of several millimeters diameter.\n\n \nThis wave cloud pattern formed off of the Île Amsterdam in the far southern Indian Ocean.The actual form of cloud created depends on the strength of the uplift and on air stability. In unstable conditions convection dominates, creating vertically developed clouds. Stable air produces horizontally homogeneous clouds. Frontal uplift creates various cloud forms depending on the composition of the front (ana-type or kata-type warm or cold front). Orographic uplift also creates variable cloud forms depending on air stability, although cap cloud and wave clouds are specific to orographic clouds.
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cirrus, stratus, and cumulus. however, those are just the three most basic forms of clouds. you have cumulonimbus, for example, which are thunderstorm clouds that form from cumulus clouds. does that help or did i confuse you more????????
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In 1896 the International Cloud Atlas was published.  It listed 10 diferent kinds of clouds.  Cloud #9 was cumulo-nimbus, which is the highest type of cloud there is.\n\nHope this helps :-)
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no clouds are not solid they are made  up of water  vapor and gas. Clouds are formed when air contains as much water vapor (gas) as it can hold. This is called the saturation point, and it can be reached in two ways. First, moisture accumulates until it reaches the maximum amount the volume of air can hold. The other method reduces the temperature of the moisture filled air, which in turn lowers the amount of moisture it can contain. Saturation, therefore, is reached through evaporation and condensation, respectively. When saturation occurs, moisture becomes visible water droplets in the form of fog and clouds.\n\nIt should be noted that condensation by itself does not cause precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, hail). The moisture in clouds must become heavy enough to succumb to gravity and return to earth's surface. This occurs through two processes. In cold clouds ice crystals and water droplets exist side by side. Due to an imbalance of water vapor pressure, the water droplets transfer to the ice crystals. The crystal seventually grow heavy enough to fall to earth. In the second process, water droplets in warm clouds collide and change their electric charge.Droplets of unlike charge attract one another and merge, thereby growing until they have sufficient weight to fall.\n\nThere is no difference between fog and clouds other than altitude. Fog is defined as a visible moisture that begins at a height lower than 50 feet. If the visible moisture begins at or above 50 feet, it is called a cloud. Two common types of fog are called radiation fog and advection fog. Radiation fog forms during the night as the earth's surface cools and the air immediately above it cools in turn by conduction. If the air is moist enough, the cooling causes it to reach saturation and visible water droplets form. We often call this type of fog ground fog because it lies so close to the surface. Advection fog forms when warm moist air moves over a colder surface (advection means to move horizontally). A perfect example is on the west coast of continents. Prevailing westerly winds move moist air from over a warm ocean area to over the colder waters off the coast. Fog forms and is carried by the westerly over the land.\n\nClouds can form anywhere in the troposphere, and although condensed liquid, they are light enough to float in the air and move from place to place by the wind. Clouds are classified according to appearance and height. Based on appearance, there are two major types: Clouds of vertical development, formed by the condensation of rising air; and clouds that are layered, formed by condensation of air without vertical movement. When clouds are classified by height, there are four classes: high, middle, low, and vertical development.\n\nCloud names, of which there are twelve, combine appearance and height. A brief description of the root name will indicate this combination of features.
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It has to do with moisture saturation.  Big tall clouds have this unlike the thin high cirrus clouds.
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Clouds are made up of tiny water droplets or ice crystals, usually a mixture of both. The water and ice scatter all light, making clouds appear white. If the clouds get thick enough or high enough all the light above does not make it through, hence the gray or dark look. Also, if there are lots of other clouds around, their shadow can add to the gray or multicolored gray appearance.
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There are multiple types of clouds because not all clouds are made the same way. The weather and climate is different everywhere at different times of day and seasons, so the way the clouds are being made can be different, too.\n\nClouds are divided into two general categories: layered and convective. These are named stratus clouds and cumulus clouds. These two cloud types are divided into four more groups that distinguish the cloud's altitude. Clouds are classified by the cloud base height not the cloud top.\n\nClick on the link below for more information! Hope this helps.
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A cloud compsition is primarlly just billions of drops of water or ice.  When such a cloud formation has an influx of water/ice, ie it's mass increases to include more water/ice, light finds it hard to pass through the mass, thus making it darker for us to see.\n\nIn a normal cloud, light can pass through the water/ice within the cloud and we see it as a distorted white/bluish/greyish/greenish hue.  But when the cloud is too thick with water/ice, the light doesn't pass through so easily and we see a darker spectrum.
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Clouds are formed by water vapor. And high pressure can hold more water vapor. So when vapor moves into a low pressure system it condenses and and forms clouds and those clouds precipitate when the system cant hold no more water vapor
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Clouds are formed essentially by water vapours.The uppermost layer of waterbodies like sea,river,ponds etc(specially sea) are in the process of evaporation always.now water vapour is a gas and due to the fa that the surface of the waterbodies and the earth is hotter,the watervapour expands its volume.As you must be knowing density of an object is its mass divided by volume.Mass being constant,if volume increases density decreases and the water-vapour getting lighter goes up.There the temperature being less ,the water vapour condenses into water-droplets and floats as clouds,
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Pictures of a cloud? Try this link:\nhttp://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=clouds\n\nIf you need pics in the future, both Google Image Search and Yahoo Image Search will give you whatever pics you need.\n\nHave a nice day,\nTerras
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it depends on what kind of weather map you are looking at. some show warm/cold fronts, some show rain, some temperature, and others just show the clouds in the atmosphere.
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The shape is completely random, based on how air currents (wind and updrafts) are moving around and inside the cloud. You get so many cloud shapes over time that a few random patterns are bound to resemble something else we're familiar with, such as a heart or a dog.
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Clouds are water vapor. Think of it like a pocket of fog in the sky.
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did you mean how do clouds form?\n\nIf so, they form from water evaporating on the surface of the earth. As the vapour rises, it reaches cooler, higher areas of the atmosphere and the vapour begins to condense, around microscopic particles in the air. Once this process has started, other molecules will start to join in, until the vapour condenses and clumps together. When enough forms, it is no longer lighter than air, and rain will occur.