Average cloud height: UK vs Australia?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve just recently moved from UK back to Australia and noticed that overcast days in the UK feel ‘oppressive’ which I thought was due to the height of clouds being lower on average in the UK. In Australia, even on overcast days you get a sense of space, that the sky goes on forever.

Is there any physical explanation for this? Are the clouds higher in Australia on average? If so why?

Am I picking up on some other cue, maybe total light level? I admit it could be an illusion and purely psychological.

2

Where in Australia are you?

3

Also, whereabouts in the UK did you go?

Most of the UK is quite hilly so you don’t often see a complete 360 degree area of flat land - all the way to the horizon all the way round. You get this effect mostly in the east of the country where the land is flat - East Anglia (mainly Norfolk), bits of Cambridgeshire.

When you see it, it takes you a bit by surprise because the sky suddenly looks so big. It’s only when you see it that it dawns on you that you don’t normally see such a big sky in the UK. The only other way to see it is on top of the highest mountain in an area.

So if you didn’t go to the east coast area or up a mountain, you probably never saw a full horizon.

Don’t know anything about relative cloud height and I’ve never been to Australia but I’m guessing full horizons in Australia are somewhat more common than in the UK.

So could be an optical illusion is what I’m saying.

4

I was also thinking there may be more pollution and haze in the UK which would reduce the horizontal visibility and make it seem more oppressive.

5

Probably not. The height of cloudbase is usually determined by temperature-dewpoint spread. This will be greater in dryer climates, and Australia is definitely dryer (on average) than the UK.

A similar (though probably less pronounced) difference can be seen between eastern and western areas of the US. Leaving out such dampholes as the Pacific northwest, areas west of, say, Denver are generally dryer than areas east of the Mississippi, and because of this would typically have cloudbases around 7000 to 10,000 ft above ground, as compared to the 2500 to 5000 ft typical of the east.

6

thanks for the answers, the dewpoint spread and pollution aspects makes sense.

In Uk I was near London in the southeast (Lewes to be Precise) and in Australia I’m now near Byron Bay, North Coast NSW, its a hilly area, but still the sky always seems higher and further away to me when cloudy.