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Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. [1] [2] Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus and is heavily influenced by nearby bodies of water, topography, and wind conditions.
Under normal summertime conditions, a daily pattern of fog and low clouds occurs. Morning sunlight heats the ground (cloud-penetrating visible light wavelengths transformed to infrared by the ground), which heats the marine layer over the land areas. This creates convective turbulence within the marine layer and evaporation of any clouds within it.
Stratus clouds form when weak vertical currents lift a layer of air off the ground and it depressurizes, following the lapse rate. This causes the relative humidity to increase due to the adiabatic cooling. [4] This occurs in environments where atmospheric stability is abundant. [5]
What causes fog? Fog is essentially "a cloud at the ground," Boxell said. For fog to form, the air needs to be saturated, meaning it's holding the maximum amount of moisture possible, so ...
Clouds and potentially fog can form within a marine layer when the water-saturated air is cooled and reaches a humidity of 100%, where it will then condense and turn into water droplets. [3] Stratus and stratocumulus can form at the top of a marine layer in the presence of these conditions. A marine layer can often be dispersed by sufficiently ...
Cloud physics is the study of the physical processes that lead to the formation, growth and precipitation of atmospheric clouds. These aerosols are found in the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere, which collectively make up the greatest part of the homosphere.
Fog is commonly considered a surface-based cloud layer. [21] The fog may form at surface level in clear air or it may be the result of a very low stratus cloud subsiding to ground or sea level. Conversely, low stratiform clouds result when advection fog is lifted above surface level during breezy conditions.
In the atmosphere, condensation produces clouds, fog and precipitation (usually only when facilitated by cloud condensation nuclei). The dew point of an air parcel is the temperature to which it must cool before water vapor in the air begins to condense. Condensation in the atmosphere forms cloud droplets.