Why are the tops of clouds all poofy and fun, but the bottoms are totally flat and boring?
In: Physics
Make a bubble bath. Be sure there’s lots of fluffy bubbles. Now put on your swimming goggles and go underneath and look up at the bubbles.
Same thing. When you look at the bottom of the clouds you’re really looking at the boundary between air masses.
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Because the region near the bottom of the cloud is too warm for the water to condense into a cloud. Hence the flatness of the bottom of clouds
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Air pressure and temperature!
Water doesn’t turn cloud like until there’s a certain amount of it in the air at a certain temperature range. You’re seeing the level at which those needs are happening.
Some of these ELI5s get too technical imo… they must not have 5 year olds…
Answer: yo I actually did a 36 second long YT video on this way back!
It’s because those clouds are so big, that there is a large difference in temperature between the top and bottom of the clouds. The top is much colder than the bottom. The droplets rise from the bottom to the top, so they cool down giving that shape.
Well I guess the puffy and fun is probably what you mean is towering
Cumulonimbus cloud.
* Hot air = can hold a lot of water (hot air+water = less dense)
* Cold air = can’t hold a lot of water (cold air = more dense)
Let’s say if you have a cup of air and it has 30C temperature it can hold 1L of water. If the temperature becomes 32C the cup expands and can hold now 1.2L of water. If it cools to 28C, the cup shrinks and now it can only hold 0.8L of water.
So and now to the explanation.
Imagine now: you have a super hot day at a beach, suddenly comes a very cold air mass. As cold air mass is more dense it pushes the warm air up very quickly. Warm air raises, as air rises it cools ~2C* per 1000ft and at the same time the airs ability to hold on to water diminishes (cup becomes smaller). At some point it reaches a temperature where the humidity is 100% (dew point / cup is now full and overflowing), “overflowing”water starts to condense and the flat bottom is born. The hot air mass is cooled, but it’s still relatively hot air vs surrounding temperature so it keeps on rising, and it keeps on cooling and the water keeps on overflowing the cup and condense.
So you have 1 specific altitude where condensation starts = flat bottom. And the remaining condensation brings out very nice, puffy, fluffy clouds.
AAAAAAND a crappy weather is inbound 🙂
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