Weather and Climate: Ch. 16 Flashcards
A whitish ring of light surrounding the sun or moon
Halo
Ice crystals in cirrostratus clouds refract the sun’s rays
Halo
Light is concentrated on either side of the sun as two brilliant spots
Sundogs
Vertical streaks of light that appear above and below a low sun as it shines through ice-crystal clouds
Sun Pillars
An arch-shaped array of colored bands
Rainbows
To see a rainbow, you must be facing the ____ with ____ at your back
rain; sun
Order of Rainbow colors from outer to inner most band:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet
Appears as a bright whitish disk centered on the moon
Corona
Bright area produced by diffraction
Iridescence
Adequate for outdoor activities without the need for artificial lighting
Civil twilight
Sufficient to distinguish outlines of objects on the ground
Nautical Twilight
Occurs when sun’s disc is between 12° and 18° below horizon
Astronomical Twilight
For clouds to precipitate:
Cloud particles must grow large enough to overcome updrafts
____ has the greatest ability to overcome an updraft
Hail
water droplets that remain liquid when temps below freezing
Supercooled drops
Warm clouds =
above freezing temps at all levels
Characteristics of warm clouds
- Boundaries sharply defined
- Common in tropics
Cold clouds =
made of ice crystals and/or supercooled drops in temps below freezing
Characteristics of cold clouds
- Wispy
- Important rain producers in midlatitudes
What are the two precipitation processess
- Collision-Coalescence Process
- Bergeron-Findeisen Process
Characteristics of Collision-Coalescence Process
- Warm cloud
- Droplets of different sizes collide and coalesce into larger droplets
- Important in tropics
Characteristics of Bergeron-Findeisen Process
- Ice-crystal process
- Cold cloud
- Ice crystals grow at expense of supercooled water droplets
- May grow large enough to fall as snowflakes
- If snowflakes melt before reaching ground, they fall as raindrops
Much of rain falling in midlatitudes in summer begins as _____
snow
Drops of liquid water
Rain