Paragraph on “Different Types of Clouds” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

Different Types of Clouds

Clouds are an essential part of the weather conditions which exist around us. Warm air rises upwards in the atmosphere carrying with it dust and moisture from evaporated surface water. At higher altitudes the air is cooler and the vapour in the warm air reaches its ‘Dew point’ where it changes either to small particles of ice or into water thus forming clouds. Since cloud formation takes place at different heights and temperatures, clouds are  of different types.

There are basically three main types of clouds. Upto about 1.5 km from the ground we generally see the first type called the ‘Stratus’ clouds, on occasions it is the grey stratus clouds which bear light rain. In colder areas the water in these clouds freezes thus resulting in snow fall. Slowly rising warm air produces these clouds.

Above these and upto about 4.5 km lie the ‘Cumulus’ clouds, these are the fluffy clouds as shown in the illustration, the fluffy shapes are  a result of quickly rising warm air. Above the cumulus clouds, at an altitude of about 14 km float the ‘Cirrus’ type of clouds. Cirrus clouds are wispy clouds formed at such a high altitude that they contain only Ice crystals.

Lying between these three main type of clouds are other types like the ‘Stratocumulus’, ‘Altocumulus’ which are medium sized and consist of rounded masses, ‘Cirrocumulus’ which contains rippled clouds or rounded masses, ‘Altostratus’ which is a greyish sheet cloud and ‘Cumulonimbus’ clouds which cause thunderstorms etc.

Cumulonimbus carry in them both negative and positive charges, the positive charges tend to move to the upper levels of the cloud while the negative charge remains below, the separation of these charges results in the discharge of lightning. As lightning strikes, it is followed by thunder which is caused by the heat created by lightning.