As the title asks, what is the average mass of each kind of cloud? Ignoring things like overcast days, and only considering clouds large enough to identify. Or maybe rather than “average” it’d be better to say “what is the mass of an archiypical cloud of each type?” Eg an archiypical cumulus, cirrus, cumulonimbus, etc.

  • A_A
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    1 year ago

    At sea level air is about 1.25 kg/m³, so for one cubic kilometer cloud that is :
    1 250 000 tons.

    I put your result into table to show a problem at 51 km and above… since density decreases monotically with altitude.

    mass (tons) altitude (km)
    1 250 000 0
    364 000 11
    88 000 20
    860 51
    64 71

    Clouds can be easily 10 cubic km.