Eli5 Why the clouds are around that height and not lower in the atmosphere?
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A cloud is sort of a patch of air totally saturated with water vapor. If the air could hold more water, you wouldn’t have this mass of visible droplets we call a cloud. We don’t usually have clouds at ground level because it’s warm enough that the air can hold a lot of water (when it can’t hold it all, we get fog.)
As you go higher, the air gets thinner and colder. This means that there’s an altitude where the air is 99% saturated with water vapor, and just above it, an altitude where the air can’t hold any more water, aka its “dew point.” That sharp line you see at the base of clouds is where the air goes from “just warm and dense enough” to “just cold and thin enough.”
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