cumulus cloud are high level clouds that are mainly composed of ice crystals.
cumulus cloud are high level clouds that are mainly composed of ice crystals.
high level clouds that are mainly composed of ice crystals?
cumulus cloud
cirrus clouds range in thickness from to , with an average thickness of . there are, on average, 30 ice crystals per liter (96 ice crystals per gallon), but this ranges from one ice crystal per 10,000 liters (3.7 ice crystals per 10,000 gallons) to 10,000 ice crystals per liter (37,000 ice crystals per gallon), a difference of eight orders of magnitude. the length of each of these ice crystals is usually 0.25 millimeters long, but they range from as short as 0.01 millimeters or as long as several millimeters. the ice crystals in contrails are much smaller than those in naturally occurring cirrus cloud, as they are around 0.001 millimeters to 0.1 millimeters in length. cirrus can vary in temperature from to .
cirrus cloud
the hugely symmetric shapes are due to depositional growth, namely, direct deposition of water vapour onto the ice crystal. depending on environmental temperature and humidity, ice crystals can develop from the initial hexagonal prism into numerous symmetric shapes. possible shapes for ice crystals are columns, needles, plates and dendrites. if the crystal migrates into regions with different environmental conditions, the growth pattern may change, and the final crystal may show mixed patterns. ice crystals tend to fall with their major axis aligned along the horizontal, and are thus visible in polarimetric weather radar signatures with enhanced (positive) differential reflectivity values. electrification of ice crystals can induce alignments different from the horizontal. electrified ice crystals are also well detectable by polarimetric weather radars.
ice crystals