7. How are clouds formed?
Answers
Answer:
Some clouds form as air warms up near the Earth's surface and rises. Heated by sunshine, the ground heats the air just above it. That warmed air starts to rise because, when warm, it is lighter and less dense than the air around it. As it rises, its pressure and temperature drop causing water vapor to condense. Eventually, enough moisture will condense out of the air to form a cloud. Several types of clouds form in this way including cumulus, cumulonimbus, mammatus, and stratocumulus clouds.
Some clouds, such as lenticular and stratus clouds, form when wind blows into the side of a mountain range or other terrain and is forced upward, higher in the atmosphere. The side of the mountains that the wind blows towards is called the windward side. The side of the mountains where the wind blows away is called the leeward side. This can also happen without a dramatic mountain range, just when air travels over land that slopes upward and is forced to rise. The air cools as it rises, and eventually clouds form. Other types of clouds, such as cumulus clouds, form above mountains too as air is warmed at the ground and rises.
Clouds also form when air is forced upward at areas of low pressure. Winds meet at the center of the low pressure system and have nowhere to go but up. All types of clouds are formed by these processes, especially altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, stratocumulus, or stratus clouds.
Weather fronts, where two large masses of air collide at the Earth’s surface, also form clouds by causing air to ris