Weight of a Cloud

My memory from my atmospheric physics days is that the water content of
a nice cumulonimbus is around 1 gram per cubic meter. Assume the
smallest cloud is a cubic kilometer and that gives you a billion grams,
or a million kilograms, or a thousand metric tons of water. That's
ignoring the weight of the air, too.

Mike


Graeme Cant wrote:
wrote:
http://www.wsi.com/corporate/newsroo...oudWeight.html

Not as light and fluffy as they look.

Interesting. When I started, my instructor told me the weight of upward
moving air in the core of a moderate thermal was about 80 tons. Haven't
ever done the figures to check the accuracy of that estimate.

GC

Steve

Mike the Strike schrieb:

My memory from my atmospheric physics days is that the water content of
a nice cumulonimbus is around 1 gram per cubic meter. Assume the
smallest cloud is a cubic kilometer and that gives you a billion grams,
or a million kilograms, or a thousand metric tons of water. That's
ignoring the weight of the air, too.

Mike



More on the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor

The chart on saturation fraction suggests much mo around 2% (16
grams) at a possible cloudbase and 0.1% (0.8g) close to the top.

Even more amazing: the Energy it takes to lift that amount of water
from ground level to near tropopause height!!! It's in the region of
the annual output of a small nuclear powerplant!

Regards
Marcel

On 20 Aug 2006 21:09:37 -0700, "Mike the Strike"
wrote:

My memory from my atmospheric physics days is that the water content of
a nice cumulonimbus is around 1 gram per cubic meter. Assume the
smallest cloud is a cubic kilometer and that gives you a billion grams,
or a million kilograms, or a thousand metric tons of water. That's
ignoring the weight of the air, too.

Mike


Graeme Cant wrote:
wrote:
http://www.wsi.com/corporate/newsroo...oudWeight.html

Not as light and fluffy as they look.

Interesting. When I started, my instructor told me the weight of upward
moving air in the core of a moderate thermal was about 80 tons. Haven't
ever done the figures to check the accuracy of that estimate.

GC

Steve


luckily it only falls on our heads in very small pieces :-)