Cloud

Cloud

In meteorology, a cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water or various chemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body. These suspended particles are also known as aerosols. Clouds in earth's atmosphere are studied in the cloud physics branch of meteorology. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated; cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. In general, precipitation will fall to the surface; an exception is virga, which evaporates before reaching the surface.

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Famous quotes containing the word cloud:

    On a cloud I saw a child,
    And he laughing said to me,

    “Pipe a song about a Lamb”;
    So I piped with merry chear.
    “Piper pipe that song again”—
    So I piped, he wept to hear.

    “Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
    Sing thy songs of happy chear”;
    So I sung the same again
    While he wept with joy to hear.
    William Blake (1757–1827)

    Hast ‘ou fashioned so airy a mood
    To draw up leaf from the root?
    Hast ‘ou found a cloud so light
    As seemed neither mist nor shade?
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose,
    Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend
    Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
    George Meredith (1828–1909)