How did clouds get their names?

Look at the picture - How are the names for the different cloud forms related to one another?

The study of clouds has always been a daydreamer’s science, aptly founded by a thoughtful young man whose favorite activity was staring out of the window at the sky. Richard Hamblyn tells the history of Luke Howard, the man who classified the clouds and forever changed humanity’s understanding of these changeable, mysterious objects.

The Naming of Clouds

On a cold December evening in 1802, a nervous young man named Luke Howard stood before the assembled members of a London science club about to give a lecture that would change his life and go on to change humanity's understanding of the skies.

Luke Howard was a pharmacist by profession, but he was a meteorologist by inclination, having been obsessed by clouds and weather since childhood. As a school boy, he spent hours staring out of the classroom window, gazing at the passing clouds. Like everyone else at the time, he had no idea how clouds formed, or how they stayed aloft. But he enjoyed observing their endless transformations.

By his own admission, Luke paid little attention to his lessons, but fortunately for the future of meteorology, he managed to pick up a good knowledge of Latin.

Compared to the other natural sciences, meteorology, the study of weather, was a late developer, mainly because weather is elusive. You can't snap off a piece of rainbow or a section of cloud for convenient study. You can, of course, collect rain water in calibrated containers, but all you really end up with are buckets of water.

Understanding clouds required a different approach, which is where Luke Howard's idea came in. His simple insight based on years of observation was that clouds have many individual shapes but they have few basic forms. In fact, all clouds belong to one of three principal types to which Howard gave the names: cirrus, Latin for tendril or hair; cumulus, heap or pile; and stratus, layer or sheet.

But that wasn't the clever part. Clouds are constantly changing, merging, rising, falling, and spreading throughout the atmosphere, rarely maintaining the same shapes for more than a few minutes. Any successful naming system had to accommodate this essential instability, as Howard realized.

So, in addition to the three main cloud types, he introduced a series of intermediate and compound types as a way of including the regular transitions that occur among clouds. A high, wispy cirrus cloud that descended and spread into a sheet was named cirrostratus, while groups of fluffy cumulus clouds that joined up and spread were named stratocumulus.

Howard identified seven cloud types, but these have since been expanded to ten, cloud nine being the towering cumulonimbus thunder cloud, which is probably why being on cloud nine means to be on top of the world.

Howard's classification had an immediate international impact. The German poet and scientist J. W. von Goethe wrote a series of poems in praise of Howard's clouds, which ended with the memorable lines:

"As clouds ascend, are folded, scatter, fall,
Let the world think of thee who taught it all,"

while Percy Shelley also wrote a poem, "The Cloud," in which each of Howard's seven cloud types was characterized in turn.

But perhaps the most impressive response to the naming of clouds was by the painter John Constable, who spent two summers on Hampstead Heath painting clouds in the open air.

Once they had been named and classified, clouds became easier to understand as the visible signs of otherwise invisible atmospheric processes. Clouds write a kind of journal on the sky that allows us to understand the circulating patterns of weather and climate.

Perhaps the most important breakthrough in understanding clouds was realizing that they are subject to the same physical laws as everything else on Earth. Clouds, for example, do not float, but fall slowly under the influence of gravity. Some of them stay aloft due to upward convection from the sun-heated ground, but most are in a state of slow, balletic descent.

"Clouds are the patron goddesses of idle fellows," as the Greek dramatist Aristophanes wrote in 420 B.C., and nephology, the study of clouds, remains a daydreamer's science, aptly founded by a thoughtful young man whose favorite activity was staring out of the window at the sky.

The names of the clouds were derived from which language?

A Latin

B Greek

C French

D German

 

Luke Howard's profession was:

A Meteorologist

B Teacher

C Pharmacist

D Clergyman

 

The name 'cirrus' means:

A Heap or pile

B Layer or sheet

C Light or pale

D Tendril or hair

 

Which famous poet wrote a poem called 'The Cloud':

A William Wordsworth

B Lord Byron

C Percy Shelley

D Henry W. Longfellow

 

The study of clouds is known as:

A Meteorology

B Cloudology

C Nephology

D Geology 

Pre-learn the vocab:

24 terms

Watch:

How clouds got their names

Short radio clip on Shelley's The Cloud

shaken     rest        showers     hail     sun     shade     again     thunder     streams

 

I bring fresh 1______ for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the 2______;

I bear light 3______ for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are 4______ the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to 5_____ on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the 6 ______.

I wield the flail of the lashing 7_____,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then 8______ I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in 9______.

 

What or who is “I” in this poem?

 

What do these words mean?

Bear   noonday   dews    buds    wield    flail   lashing   

The Cloud

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

next verses...

...

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of Heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.