Cloud atlas was published in 1802. It followed a similar effort in French by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1801. Howard's nomenclature defined four fundamental types of clouds: cirrus or thread-cloud, cumulus or heap-cloud, stratus or flat cloud (level sheet), and nimbus or rain-cloud (see Classification of clouds). There followed a long period of development of the field of meteorology and the classification of clouds, leading up to 1896, the International Year of Clouds. The history of this period is the subject of a popular book, "The Invention of Clouds". During that time, the Englishmen Rev. Clement Ley and Hon. Ralph Abercromby, were influential.
Cloud forest 10,000 mm/year and mean temperature between 8 and 20 °C. While cloud forest today is the most widely used term, in some regions, these ecosystems or special types of cloud forests are called mossy forest, elfin forest, montane thicket, and dwarf cloud forest. The definition of cloud forest can be ambiguous, with many countries not using the term (preferring such terms as Afromontane forest and upper montane rain forest, montane laurel forest, or more localised terms such as the Bolivian "yungas", and the "laurisilva" of the Atlantic Islands), and occasionally subtropical and even temperate forests in which similar meteorological conditions