What determines the color of clouds?

Answer 1

1) Cloud color is due to Mie Scattering
-This means that clouds scatter all wavelengths of light equally. All wavelengths of light = white color

2) Cloud brightness is due in part to where you are standing relative to the cloud.
-If underneath a tall thick cloud, it looks gray, but from a side view it looks white

3) Cloud brightness also depends on the type of cloud
-Thin clouds versus thick clouds

4) Cloud color also depends on the color of the light being reflected from the clouds
-If I shine a red light off of clouds, the clouds will look red

Answer 2

Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths: they thus appear white, at least from the top. Cloud droplets tend to scatter light efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the cloud, hence the grey or even sometimes dark appearance of the clouds at their base. Thin clouds may appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background, and clouds illuminated by non-white light, such as during sunrise or sunset, may be colored accordingly. In the near-infrared range, however, clouds would appear darker because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at those wavelengths.

Answer 3

Clouds are air masses that contain moisture. The more moisture they contain, the heavier they are. Heavy clouds tend to accumulate close to the surface of the Earth but may extend very, very high, with the moisture gradually reducing as you go up in altitude.

Water vapor reflects light throughout the entire color spectrum. That is why clouds appear white when viewed from the side. When sunlight shines down on clouds, the more the moisture within the cloud, the more the light is absorbed and reflected away. Therefore clouds with a lot of moisture look dark to us when we are underneath them.

The Sun's rays appear to have color in the morning at Sunrise, and at Sunset. Those colors reflect back off of the moisture in clouds and that gives the clouds those lovely hues of red, orange, and yellow at those times of day.

Within tornados and hurricanes the rapidly moving masses of air may have accumulated large quantities of dust particles and that dust lends an even darker appearance to the moving air.

Regards,
Zah

Answer 4

If there is no contamination all clouds are white during daytime.
Dark clouds are simply thick clouds that obscure the sun.
If you could climb above dark clouds in day light they would be white.
At night clouds are invisible unless you get some reflection from the ground,moon light on the top or they obscure a visible back ground.

Answer 5

The dust determines the colour of the clouds .

Answer 6

1) Cloud color is due to Mie Scattering
-This means that clouds scatter all wavelengths of light equally. All wavelengths of light = white color

2) Cloud brightness is due in part to where you are standing relative to the cloud.
-If underneath a tall thick cloud, it looks gray, but from a side view it looks white

3) Cloud brightness also depends on the type of cloud
-Thin clouds versus thick clouds

4) Cloud color also depends on the color of the light being reflected from the clouds
-If I shine a red light off of clouds, the clouds will look red

Answer 7

Its actually scattering of light.

Particles in the cloud being very large large as compared to the particles in the air, scatter light more effectively.

As all the light incident on the particles gets scattered, and no light is reflected back, therefore the clouds appear white.

Answer 8

temperature determines the color of the cloud

Answer 9

1. Chemical impurities in the water vapor might do it. Never actually heard of that though.

2. More likely, sunset (yellows and reds) light reflecting from them.

3. The thicker they are the less light gets through, resulting in the grays and very dark grays seen in storm clouds.

Answer 10

Dark grey clouds are warmer and are made up of water vapor. White clouds are at higher altitudes and colder and are made when those water vapor droplets freeze into tiny ice particles. Snow clouds are dark because the ice particles are bigger and therefor block more light, but since they are bigger, they fall as snow.