I was flying home from Fargo on Sunday, looking, out at the clouds as the plane descended into Newark, and started wondering: Why don’t the clouds just dissipate? What keeps them together?
I took a look at Britannica, NOAA, the Weather Channel, Google searches, etc. but never found much explanation. There’s lots to look at on how clouds form, and what eventually might make clouds dissipate, but nothing on what keeps them together in between.
Takers?
There is no bonding action between the water droplets within a cloud.
Precipitation occurs with one or more of the following:
Increase in humidity,
Decrease in temperature,
Decrease in pressure.
Clouds are simply patches of ordinary air which exceed a certain significant point of atmospheric conditions.
Just a few days ago, some one asked the same question. If you did a search on the SDMB, you would have found:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=69734
No wonder I had Deja Vu…I answered THAT post TOO!!!
Oh, goodness, that’s embarrassing. I actually did search the SDMB, but of course my phrasing wasn’t spot on and by the time you run something simple, like “cloud” and “together,” you end up with 800 threads…
Sigh. My kingdom for a proximity operator in the SDMB search engine…
Diallel lines.
::grin, duck & run::