Why are the tops of clouds all poofy and fun, but the bottoms are totally flat and boring?
In: Physics
Air gets colder as you go up.
Clouds form when invisible water vapour rizes and gets cold enough to turn into droplets, making the cloud.
This happens at a specific distance from the ground (altitude), making the bottom of the cloud flat (and boring).
Further up, the cloud can grow in fun shapes and sizes. It also starts to get cold enough for the water vapour/ droplets to freeze into poofy ice. Making it a cool white colour.
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Because the cloud doesn’t really end at the flat part. As evaporated water rises, it lifts over a section where it becomes cold enough for the water to condense into clouds. Under that line, though, there’s a giant pocket of water vapor ready to rise and turn into clouds to make the cloud bigger.
[MinuteEarth has a good video that illustrates this.](https://youtu.be/QC2x_RRnk8E)
It’s because the water vapors in the atmosphere condense at a specific pressure/temperature, so once the water vapors reaches the base of the cloud it begins to condense.
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As you go up the pressure decreases evenly.
As pressure drops, temperature drops evenly.
As tenperature drops, there comes a point (dewpoint) where it releases the water in it in the form of steam (cloid.
When the sun heats the ground, it in turn heats the air so it rises.
So there is a thing called cloudbase, a level under which the air keeps the water as invisible vapour, and above that as cloud. If air goes up clouds form, as air goes down it dissipates. That is why there is a line under which there is no cloud.
As warm air rises and cools. Warm air holds more water than cold air due to respective expansive and contraction properties of gases. The flat bottom you see is called the Lifting Condensation Line or LCL. Once air reaches this level it cools slower due to latent heat given off by the change of state from vapor to liquid. Above the LCL gathered water droplets cause chaos as they continue to rise and crash into each other. Puffy clouds or Cumulus clouds are usually riding a cold front. When the cold front hits warmer air it acts as a wedge and plows up the warm air to higher altitude, the difference between the cold front and warm front is called a pressure gradient. The bigger the gradient the bigger the clouds and more severe the storm by forcing the warm air higher.
Imagine a freshly poured beer. The foam at the top is all bubbly, but the bottom part where it rests on the liquid beer is straight and smooth…
Clouds are like that.
Air acts a lot like a liquid. The clouds are the foam, the denser air they rest on is like the beer.
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