What keeps the clouds up?

Answer 1

Clouds aren’t just random droplets of water. What they are is tiny droplets of water that have condensed from water vapor in areas where the conditions (temperature, air pressure and humidity) are exactly right. Anywhere where you have the correct combination of these conditions, you’ll get a cloud. Anywhere that you don’t, you don’t.

Areas with this kind of conditions don’t occur in random tiny places. Instead, there will be a large area of one condition that gradually shifts into another. (If this doesn’t make sense, think of just temperature. You don’t get a different temperature at every spot on the globe. Instead, you get a large area of warm air that gradually shifts into a large area of cooler air. The same is true for air pressure and humidity.) This is why you get a large area of ’cloud’ in one place and nothing at all in another. You can think of clouds as being physical maps of the weather conditions in the sky.

This is also what holds the clouds up. In general, if a cloud is high up in the sky, the conditions just below it aren’t right for the cloud to form. As the water droplets fall, they reach areas with the wrong temperature or pressure and evaporate again. Only if the clouds become densely packed enough for the water to form large enough droplets can the droplets fall to the ground. Not all clouds form high up, either... sometimes the right conditions can occur at groundlevel, giving us fog.

Answer 2

what keeps the clouds up is not the question
the clouds are there because of rising air which is moister and warmer than the air above, where the warm air meets the colder air there is a phenomenom known as a "dew point "
at that point they condense and change to water thus clouds.
the height of which changes daily and without going into too much detail is mainly to do with the air pressure (low or high) and whether thre has been a recent cold or warm front , there are a few more variables but suffice to say the clouds cannot go "down " because the air below is warmer so they would return to being moist
the flat bottoms you sometimes see is equivalent to laying a down pillow on glass
in soaring flight clouds normally mark the altitude limit also.
the only other analogy i can think of is neutral buoyancy in water , i.e. if you filled a ballon with a tiny amount of air and released it from the seabed it would rise but not all the way to the top it would stop at equal pressure
im sure a scientist will find flaws in my explanation but i hope you get the gist

Answer 3

The base of a cloud is determined by the condensation level. In other words just below the base of the cloud, the air is not saturated. (Saturated air can condense to water droplets, which is what clouds are made of. Unsaturated air is too "dry" for condensation so the water remains as vapour.

The presence of a cloud is often due to its position and it can have continually changing air moving through it. An example of this type of cloud is an alto cumulus lenticularis. These are usually formed in the lee of mountains. the clouds may be stacked, when there are vertical layers of saturated air (forms clouds) with dry layers in between (don't form clouds).

It's an enormous topic for just a few lines - do look further.

Answer 4

I would like to know this also and the replies so far have not answered the question. Eranga D waffles vaguely and at length, of the "right conditions" !!! Thanks.

The point is: Clouds are made up of tiny water droplets. Water is heavier than air. What then keeps those droplets up?

Answer 5

The Cloud Fairy. The Magic Elves. And little dropplets of water that are apart of the evaporation cycle of evapouration and condensation of water and somewhere in there clouds form. Go figure! :}.

Light W.

Answer 6

clouds are condensing water vapour so they are light. they are kept up by layer of denser air under them. If you look carefully you will see they always have a flat base and that is were the heavier air starts

Answer 7

Red Bull?

Answer 8

I think Its the same Hot Air that men are full of.

Answer 9

Turbulence - difference in air pressure

Answer 10

A very great deal of the essential patience.