What are droplets of water suspended high up in the sky?

What are droplets of water suspended high up in the sky?

A cloud is composed of tiny water droplets (or ice crystals) that are suspended in the air. If the droplets become large enough,they may be visible as a cloud or fog. They may also fall to Earth in the form of rain (or snow).

What is the suspended water in the atmosphere?

Powered by. Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. Precipitation is any type of water that forms in the Earth’s atmosphere and then drops onto the surface of the Earth. Water vapor, droplets of water suspended in the air, builds up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Water vapor in the atmosphere is visible as clouds and fog.

What do you call the gas state of water?

Water is known to exist in three different states; as a solid, liquid or gas. Water existing as a gas is called water vapor. When referring to the amount of moisture in the air, we are actually referring to the amount of water vapor.

What keeps a cloud in the sky?

Clouds form when warm wet air rises and condenses in cold air. Water droplets in air behave the same way as dust6. The second reason that clouds can float in the air is that there is a constant flow of warm air rising to meet the cloud: the warm air pushes up on the cloud and keeps it afloat.

What happens when clouds become full of water?

When clouds get so full of water droplets that they can’t hold any more, the water falls back to the ground as rain! Sometimes the water droplets freeze and fall to the ground as snow, sleet, or hail. Water or ice that comes from clouds is called precipitation.

What happens to water after it falls from the sky?

When precipitation falls over the land surface, it follows various routes in its subsequent paths. Some of it evaporates, returning to the atmosphere; some seeps into the ground as soil moisture or groundwater; and some runs off into rivers and streams.

How do drops of water form in the atmosphere?

Way up high in the atmosphere, dust and smoke particles suspended in clouds create places where moisture can settle and form into drops. The drops sitting up here are like little globes of water, nearly round and spherical.

How big is a drop of water in a cloud?

At first, these water droplets are itty-bitty. The average drop inside a cloud is about one-fifth of the thickness of a piece of paper. So while an entire cloud may be as massive as an elephant, the water inside isn’t grouped into elephant-sized clumps, and the individual droplets are much lighter than the air around them.

How can the wind lift water drops up in the air?

You can compare the water drops to pieces of paper: If you took two sheets of the same size, then tore one up into tiny pieces and crumpled the other into a ball, the wind would be able to lift those tiny pieces up into the air.

Why don’t raindrops fall from the clouds?

The distance of the cloud base from the ground is also a factor: In some regions, he explained, cloud bases can sit over 10,000 feet above the ground (on the East Coast, they’re usually half as high). If the air is dry and the cloud is high, raindrops are unlikely to survive the trip down.