Cloud physics vertically developed clouds, the cumulonimbus type is the tallest and can virtually span the entire troposphere from a few hundred metres above the ground up to the tropopause. It is the cloud responsible for thunderstorms. Some cirriform clouds can form at very high to extreme levels above the troposphere, mostly above the polar regions of Earth. Polar stratospheric clouds clouds are seen but rarely in winter at altitudes of 18 to 30 kilometers, while in summer, noctilucent clouds occasionally form at high latitudes at an altitude range of 76 to 85 kilometers. Homospheric types determined by cross-classification of forms and
Cloud cloud of this type is the Morning Glory, a rolling cylindrical cloud that appears unpredictably over the Gulf of Carpentaria in Northern Australia. Associated with a powerful "ripple" in the atmosphere, the cloud may be "surfed" in glider aircraft. More general airmass instability in the troposphere tends to produce clouds of the more freely convective cumulus genus type, whose species are mainly indicators of degrees of atmospheric instability and resultant vertical development of the clouds. A cumulus cloud initially forms in the low level of the troposphere as a cloudlet of the species "humilis" that shows only slight vertical development.