cumulonimbus

How does a cumulonimbus Occur?
The air heated by radiation from the Sun on the Earth’s surface expands and becomes lighter than air on top of him. It rises, like a balloon. If the air is humid enough, water vapor in it condenses into water droplets: a type of cumulus cloud appears. In an unstable atmosphere, the vertical motion of air are intense and will encourage this by condensing the magnification of the cloud, which is growing and gaining altitude.  The highest droplets turn into ice crystals: the cumulus becomes a cumulonimbus.

What will happen in a cumulonimbus?

The audience is a plant thermodynamics, which is nurtured by warm, moist air to provide energy for upward movement.  His energy is considerable: each second, a large cumulonimbus can aspire 700 000 tons of air and absorb and 8 800 tonnes of water vapor.  The same cloud can return to the earth’s surface 4 000 tons of water in the form of liquid water, snow or hail.

The storms generally act as electric generators, creating a common ground led to the cloud. Indeed, the vertical motion of air in the audience are very violent: brewed by winds exceeding 130 km / h, the particles of water and ice cloud collide. These collisions cause many electrifying the cloud, where particles of opposite sign regroup at various stages since the surface (negatively charged) to the summit (positively charged). . Microdécharges the spread and then eventually establish electric connection between the cloud and the ground.