Electric Clouds

[seasmith]

Gravity or electricity?

(Pictures: "Night Shining" Clouds Getting Brighter.)

Published August 20, 2010

Photos: Honeycomb Clouds "Communicate," Rain in Unison

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... 00x450.jpg

[Aveo9]

So, something (or the lack of something) turns normal moist air into an opaque cloud, which then floats on a pressure/plasma barrier like foam on a lake and in turn is capped under a pressure/plasma barrier under the stratosphere (like a thermocline).

The temperature of air in the troposphere generally decreases with height. In other words, rising air cools. Clouds form when the rising moist air cools all the way to the dew point temperature. At that temperature the water vapour condenses out of the air into visible water droplets, which form the clouds we see. It's exactly the same process as the one that makes water form on your windows on a cold morning, and one of the processes that makes your air conditioning work.

Developed clouds generally have flat(ish) bottoms because the air below the base of the cloud is too warm for the water vapour to condense. The height of the cloud-base will generally indicate the current height at which the air is at the local dew point temperature.

As more and more moist air rises into the cloud, the density of the water droplets increases until their density is greater than the density of the rising air beneath them. At this point the droplets are too heavy to "float", so they come crashing to earth as rain.

The reason some clouds have icy tops is because the air is below freezing at that altitude. The water droplets therefore freeze into ice droplets, which have an even lower density, and therefore take longer to reach a size where they'll come crashing back down to earth as hail or snow (unless they melt on the way down, in which case they come down as rain).

The idea that clouds are electrically powered is fascinating, but the thermal model is very well established and has been very successfully applied in other areas (like air conditioning as I mentioned above). I'd say clouds are far more thermally powered than electrically powered.

[Aardwolf]

What about fog?

[Aveo9]

Fog occurs when the air at ground level is below the dew point temperature. The dew point temperature is the point (for any given pressure) at which the air becomes "saturated" - it can't hold any more moisture. Relative humidity is at 100% at this point and any additional water being added to the air will just condense into visible water droplets. We call this "fog" when it occurs at ground level and "cloud" when it occurs above ground level.

Mist is the same thing. Mist occurs when the the air immediately above the ground is colder than the air above it. The layer of air next to the ground is below the dew point, while the air above this is above dew point and so doesn't form mist. Mist eventually disappears in the heat of the morning sunlight because the sun heats the air back above the dew point.

[nick c]

hi Aveo9,
From earlier in this thread...why do clouds float?
http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentof ... uds-float/
The winds explanation and the small size of the cloud's water droplets are used. But this does not seem to be adequate, as is stated in the the quote below. The analogy of clouds to dust motes seems woefully inadequate...why do not dust motes congregate into clouds?

The following was written in 1946, so perhaps there are some better explanations that have been developed since then. But it is an interesting and thought provoking read:

The ingredients of the air—oxygen, nitrogen, argon and other gases—though not in a compound but in a mixture, are found in equal proportions at various levels of the atmosphere despite great differences in specific weights. The explanation accepted in science is this: “Swift winds keep the gases thoroughly mixed, so that except for water-vapor the composition of the atmosphere is the same throughout the troposphere to a high degree of approximation.” (2) This explanation cannot be true. If it were true, then the moment the wind subsides, the nitrogen should stream upward, and the oxygen should drop, preceded by the argon. If winds are caused by a difference in weight between warm and cold air, the difference in weight between heavy gases high in the atmosphere and light gases at the lower levels should create storms, which would subside only after they had carried each gas to its natural place in accordance with its gravity or specific weight. But nothing of the kind happens.

When some aviators expressed the belief that “pockets of noxious gas” are in the air, the scientists replied:

“There are no ‘pockets of noxious gas.’ No single gas, and no other likely mixture of gases, has, at ordinary temperatures and pressures, the same density as atmospheric air. Therefore, a pocket of foreign gas in that atmosphere would almost certainly either bob up like a balloon, or sink like a stone in water.” (3)

Why, then, do not the atmospheric gases separate and stay apart in accordance with the specific gravities?



Ozone, though heavier than oxygen, is absent in the lower layers of the atmosphere, is present in the upper layers, and is not subject to the “mixing effect of the wind.” The presence of ozone high in the atmosphere suggests that oxygen must be still higher: “As oxygen is less dense than ozone, it will tend to rise to even greater heights.” (4) Nowhere is it asked why ozone does not descend of its own weight or at least why it is not mixed by the wind with other gases.



Water, though eight hundred times heavier than air, is held in droplets, by the millions of tons, miles above the ground. Clouds and mist are composed of droplets which defy gravitation.



Even if perfect elasticity is a quality of the molecules of all gases, the motion of the molecules, if effected by a mechanical cause, must subside because of the gravitational attraction between the particles and also because of the gravitational pull of the earth. There should also be a loss of momentum as the result of the transformation of a part of the energy of motion into vibration of molecules hit in the collisions.(5) But since the molecules of a gas at a constant temperature (or in a perfect insulator) do not stop moving, it is obvious that a force generated in collisions drives them. The molecules of gases try to escape one another. Repulsion between the particles of gases and vapors counteracts the attraction.



The weight of the atmosphere is constantly changing as the changing barometric pressure indicates. Low pressure areas are not necessarily encircled by high pressure belts. The semidiurnal changes in barometric pressure are not explainable by the mechanistic principles of gravitation and the heat effect of solar radiation. The cause of these variations is unknown.
“It has been known now for two and a half centuries, that there are more or less daily variations in the height of the barometer, culminating in two maxima and two minima during the course of 24 hours. Since Dr. Beal’s discovery (1664-65), the same observation has been made and puzzled over at every station at which pressure records were kept and studied, but without success in finding for it the complete physical explanation. In speaking of the diurnal and semidiurnal variations of the barometer, Lord Rayleigh says: ‘The relative magnitude of the latter [semidiurnal variations], as observed at most parts of the earth’s surface, is still a mystery, all the attempted explanations being illusory.’” (6)

One maximum is at 10 a.m., the other at 10 p.m.; the two minima are at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. The heating effect of the sun can explain neither the time when the maxima appear nor the time of the minima of these semidiurnal variations. If the pressure becomes lower without the air becoming lighter through a lateral expansion due to heat, this must mean that the same mass of air gravitates with changing force at different hours.

The lowest pressure is near the equator, in the belt of the doldrums. Yet the troposphere is highest at the equator, being on the average about 18 km. high there; it is lower in the moderate latitudes, and only 6 km. high above the ground at the poles.



Laplace, pondering the shape of the atmospheric envelope of the earth, came to the conclusion that the atmosphere, which rotates with the same angular velocity as the earth and which behaves like a fluid, must be lenticular in form; its polar and equatorial axes must be about 35,000 and 52,000 miles respectively; at the equator the atmosphere must extend more than 21,000 miles above the ground. At these distances from the ground the gravitational force of the earth is just equal to the centrifugal force due to rotation.

From the measurement of the pressure of the earth’s atmosphere, measurement based also on the principles of gravitation, it has been deduced that the atmosphere is but 17 (not 21,000) miles high.

Observations of the flight of meteorites and of the polar auroras lead to the conjecture that the atmosphere reaches to a height of 130 miles (meteorites) or over 400 miles (polar auroras). Radio measurements yield about 200 miles for the upper layer recognizable through this method of investigation.

Two computations, both based on the principle of gravitation, differ in the proportion of 17 and 21,000. Direct observations do not justify either of the computed figures.



Cyclones, characterized by low pressure and by winds blowing toward their centers, move counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. This movement of air currents in cyclonic vortices is generally explained as the effect of the earth’s rotation.

Anticyclones, characterized by high pressure and by winds blowing from their centers move clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. The movement of anticyclones has not been explained and is regarded as enigmatic.

Cyclones and anticyclones are considered a problem of fluidal motion with highest or lowest pressure in the center. As the movement of anticyclones cannot be explained by the mechanistic principles of gravitation and rotation, it must be concluded that the rotation of cyclones is also unexplained.

http://www.varchive.org/ce/cosmos.htm

Also, Wal Thornhill, Electric Weather:

So it is proposed that water droplets in clouds experience an antigravity effect. It appears to be related to the 'Biefield-Brown Effect,' where a charged high-voltage planar capacitor tends to move in the direction of the positive electrode. That effect may explain how millions of tons of water can be suspended kilometres above the ground, when cloud droplets are about 1,000 times denser than the surrounding air.

Of course, this raises the issue of charge separation in clouds. The conventional 'isolated Earth' view is that positive and negative charge is 'somehow' separated by vertical winds in clouds and that this process in thunderstorms is responsible for charging up the ionosphere and causing the atmospheric electric field. But this begs the question of cause and effect. Recent high-altitude balloon flights find that charge is not built up in the cloud, it already exists in the ionosphere above. In January 2002 I argued the electric universe model: "Thunderstorms are not electricity generators, they are passive elements in an interplanetary circuit, like a self-repairing leaky condenser. The energy stored in the cloud 'condenser' is released as lightning when it short-circuits. The short-circuits can occur either within the cloud or across the external resistive paths to Earth or the ionosphere. The charge across the cloud 'condenser' gives rise to violent vertical electrical winds within the cloud, not vice versa."

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3aj

Nick

[webolife]

Interactions between molecules in the atmosphere are electrical in nature, no doubt. But the dynamic phase change equilibrium between rising [less dense] water vapor and falling [more dense] water droplets in the cloud state seems a much simpler explanation, and is easily observable in fast motion cloud videos. Water droplets within clouds are in fact constantly falling... as they do so they encounter [adiabatically] warmer air and evaporate [or sublime in the case of ice crystals] and the vapor then rises again until it condenses back into the droplet form. When the humidity is sufficient and water droplets coalesce into larger sizes you get precipitation. This is also a ready explanation for charge differentiation in a cloud, particularly in a thundercloud where the upward velocity of the [+] water vapor is rapid [30 m per sec] and [-] water droplets are coalescing and falling quickly. There is no antigravity requirement.

[Aardwolf]

Fog occurs when the air at ground level is below the dew point temperature. The dew point temperature is the point (for any given pressure) at which the air becomes "saturated" - it can't hold any more moisture. Relative humidity is at 100% at this point and any additional water being added to the air will just condense into visible water droplets. We call this "fog" when it occurs at ground level and "cloud" when it occurs above ground level.

Mist is the same thing. Mist occurs when the the air immediately above the ground is colder than the air above it. The layer of air next to the ground is below the dew point, while the air above this is above dew point and so doesn't form mist. Mist eventually disappears in the heat of the morning sunlight because the sun heats the air back above the dew point.

My point was, what is holding it up? If has no updraft of air or denser dry air to rest on.

[Aveo9]

Hi Nick C

It certainly is an interesting read, but there are explanations available for many of the problems brought up.

The ingredients of the air—oxygen, nitrogen, argon and other gases—though not in a compound but in a mixture, are found in equal proportions at various levels of the atmosphere despite great differences in specific weights. The explanation accepted in science is this: “Swift winds keep the gases thoroughly mixed, so that except for water-vapor the composition of the atmosphere is the same throughout the troposphere to a high degree of approximation.” (2) This explanation cannot be true. If it were true, then the moment the wind subsides, the nitrogen should stream upward, and the oxygen should drop, preceded by the argon.

I don't pretend to be an expert on meteorology, but it seems that at altitudes below approx. 100 km atmospheric turbulence is the reason for such a homogenous mixture of the gases in our atmosphere. As to what exactly drives the turbulence I'm not sure - it seems to be a number of factors and some of them certainly seem electrical - but it's turbulence none the less. To put it another way "what happens when the wind drops" is not a valid question because in the mid atmosphere the "wind" never drops. Above 100 km (or so) gases do indeed layer themselves according to their specific weights, with nitrogen extending further outwards from the earth than oxygen and so on. The transistion region is known as the turbopause.

Ozone, though heavier than oxygen, is absent in the lower layers of the atmosphere, is present in the upper layers, and is not subject to the “mixing effect of the wind.” The presence of ozone high in the atmosphere suggests that oxygen must be still higher: “As oxygen is less dense than ozone, it will tend to rise to even greater heights.” (4) Nowhere is it asked why ozone does not descend of its own weight or at least why it is not mixed by the wind with other gases.

There's a very good reason ozone is mostly found at certain altitudes. The ozone layer isn't like a layer in a sponge cake. It's a diffuse region in the stratosphere where the ozone concentration is far higher than in other parts of the atmosphere. In fact ozone is found in various concentrations throughout the entire lower and mid atmosphere, including at ground level.

A good graphical description of how the concentration of ozone varies with height can be found here: http://aerial.evsc.virginia.edu/~jlm8h/class/keeng1.gif

As I said - there's a very good reason ozone is mostly found at the height of the ozone layer. Ozone is formed in the atmosphere when UV light (specifically UV-C light I believe) strikes an oxygen (O2) molecule and splits it into individual oxygen atoms. These atoms then combine with other O2 molecules to form ozone (O3). However ozone is very reactive and very short-lived in our atmosphere. What's more, if UV light hits an ozone molecule, it will also split into individual oxygen atoms which then combine with other O2 molecules to form more ozone, or with other O atoms to form O2 molecules.

This process can only be sustained at certain altitudes. Above these altitudes the atmosphere is too thin and there aren't enough O2 molecules for this reaction to occur. Below these altitudes there isn't enough UV-C light to cause oxygen to form into ozone. So the reaction is restricted to what we call the ozone layer.

Ozone is also formed by arc-mode plasma discharges in an oxygen rich environment. It's a common byproduct of both arc welding and lightning.

So it is proposed that water droplets in clouds experience an antigravity effect. It appears to be related to the 'Biefield-Brown Effect,' where a charged high-voltage planar capacitor tends to move in the direction of the positive electrode. That effect may explain how millions of tons of water can be suspended kilometres above the ground, when cloud droplets are about 1,000 times denser than the surrounding air.

Do a google search for cloud time-lapse videos. One of the most noticeable characteristics of cumulo-type clouds is their rolling, tumbling motion. In fact a well developed cumulus cloud seems to behave remarkably like a fountain. "Puffs" of cloud are rising in the middle of the cloud and then tumbling down the outside until they disappear at the edge of the cloud-base. This suggests a convection model. Moisture is rising through the air until it reaches the height where it condenses into water droplets. These droplets continue upwards due to their momentum, until they reach the apex of their climb and come tumbling back down the outside of the updraft (pretty much like a ball thrown straight up). If the water droplets aren't of a sufficient mass, then they'll re-evaporate as soon as they drop below the height of the cloud-base into warmer air. If they are of a sufficient mass then they won't fully evaporate, but will continue falling as rain.

A small cumulus cloud is even more interesting to watch. In this video here (you need quicktime): http://tktimelapse.com/code/C-0204.html
... the clouds seem to be barrel-rolling as they drift in the wind. Again, this would be due to moisture condensing and then falling (and then re-evaporating). The idea that clouds are "suspended" in the air like a cork in water just doesn't seem to match observation.

[Aardwolf]

The idea that clouds are "suspended" in the air like a cork in water just doesn't seem to match observation.

So how do you explain fog and mist?

[webolife]

As Aveo already explained above, fog and mist are all about dew point. Fog and mist happen when the near surface humidity is high and ground temperature is low. It can happen in a variety of situations, including transpiration from a forest on a cold morning. One correction to an earlier statement of Aveo's, sunlight does not warm air, it warms the ground which then conducts to the air above. Moisture on the ground can be evaporated by the sun, then it rises [as water vapor] into the colder air above where it may then condense again as fog or mist. In some cases, fair weather high pressure pushes this fog into peripheral regions, where it is referred to as advection fog. If a temperature inversion is present, generally also a fair weather phenomenon, the fog stays low to the ground and the moisture reevaporates in the warm air at the higher levels.

[Aardwolf]

As Aveo already explained above, fog and mist are all about dew point. Fog and mist happen when the near surface humidity is high and ground temperature is low. It can happen in a variety of situations, including transpiration from a forest on a cold morning. One correction to an earlier statement of Aveo's, sunlight does not warm air, it warms the ground which then conducts to the air above. Moisture on the ground can be evaporated by the sun, then it rises [as water vapor] into the colder air above where it may then condense again as fog or mist. In some cases, fair weather high pressure pushes this fog into peripheral regions, where it is referred to as advection fog. If a temperature inversion is present, generally also a fair weather phenomenon, the fog stays low to the ground and the moisture reevaporates in the warm air at the higher levels.

But that doesn't explain why water molecules condensed into liquid form 1000 times denser than the air directly below them, manage to suspend themselves against gravity. The cloud argument based on wind holding them up does not work in this case? And neither does the moist air less dense than dry air argument (although that doesn't work for clouds either because we are talking about condensed water in liquid form not the gaseous vapour form).

[webolife]

Not sure what you're missing here. When the droplets are small they are held up by updrafts, but the larger dense droplets you are referring to are FALLING into warmer air where they [may] evaporate into less dense vapor which then RISES back up until it reaches that adiabatic cooling zone to condense once again. Clouds are a dynamic suspension, not a density layering like a halocline. Hail illustrates this well, under the extreme updrafting in thunderclouds, icing in layers with each new trip upward into the very cold cloud tops. When water droplets sufficiently coalesce to overcome the updrafting and evaporation/rising processes, it precipitates.

[Aardwolf]

Not sure what you're missing here. When the droplets are small they are held up by updrafts, but the larger dense droplets you are referring to are FALLING into warmer air where they [may] evaporate into less dense vapor which then RISES back up until it reaches that adiabatic cooling zone to condense once again. Clouds are a dynamic suspension, not a density layering like a halocline. Hail illustrates this well, under the extreme updrafting in thunderclouds, icing in layers with each new trip upward into the very cold cloud tops. When water droplets sufficiently coalesce to overcome the updrafting and evaporation/rising processes, it precipitates.

I'm missing the process that keep liquid water suspended in fog when there is no updraft. You keep answering by refering to clouds for some reason.

EDIT - Also, what do you mean by larger dense droplets? When in liquid form the density is the same. Larger drops are not more dense. Are you confusing with water vapour?

[Aveo9]

I should really point out that everything I've said applies well to cumulo-type clouds, but not to strato-type clouds or cirro-type clouds.

In case anyone's not sure of the difference:

Cumulo-type clouds are the fluffy, puffy ones that most we normally think of when people say "cloud". They can be modelled very well solely using convection.
Strato-type clouds are the thin featureless layers that typically cover the entire sky. Apparently they're not convective clouds, so it could be argued that nothing I've said so far applies to them (apart from the mechanism of condensation). I think fog is a ground-level stratus cloud. Like all clouds they form when water condenses into droplets, but they don't seem to be held up by convection the way cumulus clouds are.
Cirro-type clouds are the high wispy ones. I'm not personally convinced that the convection model applies to them. Why doesn't the water condense lower down? Is the air too dry? I'm not sure.

The only convective reason I can think of for fog not simply falling to the ground is that the ground may be too warm. The layer of air immediately above the ground would also warm up and rise a short distance, dragging any fog droplets up with it. This would mean the fog's in the same situation as a cumulus cloud - there's as much moisture rising as there is falling, so the net effect is a balance.

Has an electric charge ever been observed in clouds? I know charge separation is proposed by the mainstream as the cause of lightning, but has it ever been observed? If clouds are ionised and rising through the atmosphere towards a positive charge, then we should be able to measure the ionisation in them. How can aircraft fly through them without discharging?

[Aardwolf]

The only convective reason I can think of for fog not simply falling to the ground is that the ground may be too warm. The layer of air immediately above the ground would also warm up and rise a short distance, dragging any fog droplets up with it. This would mean the fog's in the same situation as a cumulus cloud - there's as much moisture rising as there is falling, so the net effect is a balance.

Fog can appear on frozen lakes so I doubt covection is operating in that case. Also, I don't understand how convection would work anyway. We are talking about droplets that are 1000 times the density and weight of the very slow moving warm air below moving upward. There shouldn't be any physical process to overide the gravity pulling on those droplets.

I think it's obvious there is another unexplained process of an electrical nature suspending the water against the pull of gravity.