Exam 12: Moisture, Clouds, and Precipitation

Identify and label each of the cloud types (indicated by letters)in the accompanying figure.

The change of state from a gas to a liquid is called ________.

"Frost" build up inside a household freezer is an example of which process?

On a warm summer day, you go outside and feel fat, cold raindrops splashing on your hands. On a winter day, you go outside and notice fat, fluffy snowflakes piling up on top of your mittens. Compare and contrast the mechanisms by which these two kinds of precipitation were produced.

Which of the following would NOT be associated with stable atmospheric conditions?

After the proper wet bulb measuring procedure, the two thermometers on a sling psychrometer yield the same temperature. This indicates that ________.

________ is a cloud with its base at or very near the ground.

Any open container having a consistent cross-sectional area throughout can be used as a(n)________.

Examine the photo. Do these hot-air balloons illustrate absolute stability, absolute instability, or conditional instability? Explain.

On a specific day in the winter in St. Louis, Missouri it began snowing in the morning, the snow changed to rain by noon, and later in the afternoon sleet was falling. This later turned to snow, and by evening rain was freezing on bridges and roadways as glaze. Briefly explain how such a sequence of precipitation might occur.

Examine the photo. Explain how the relative humidity inside the house compares to the relative humidity outside the house on this particular day.

________ occurs when warm air is forced up and over a mass of cooler air.

________ occurs when moist air has an environmental lapse rate between the dry and wet adiabatic rates. Simply, the air is stable for an unsaturated parcel or air, but becomes unstable if the parcel of air be forced high enough for it be become saturated.

On average, snow takes up about ten times as much volume than the same water falling as rain.

When air sinks, it compresses and warms.

Radar is capable of measuring how much precipitation is falling in a given location from as much as several hundred kilometers' distance away.

The collision-coalescence process generates big raindrops that sweep up smaller cloud droplets, thus growing bigger. Potentially, they grow so large that frictional drag from the surrounding air causes the raindrop to break apart into a larger number of smaller droplets.

Air that resists vertical motion is described as being stable.

________ clouds that form sheets or layers that cover much of the sky.

Why is the vertical movement of air critical to the formation of clouds and precipitation? What role do adiabatic temperature changes play in these processes?