Can clouds “freeze”?
The other day, I really wanted to go swimming at the lake in the morning straight after getting up. My parents agreed, though it turned out later that it wasn’t that warm.
Undeterred, I ran into the lake to splash around. As I lay wrapped up in my towel on our blanket after my swim, I watched the wonderful play of clouds in the sky. The little sheep (clouds) smiled at me. Yes, I could even spot bunnies in the clouds! As time passed by, I started to feel a little shivery and started wondering: were the clouds actually “freezing” up there in the sky too?
I asked Christof Lüpkes, who knows all about this. Among other things, he measures cloud temperatures from an airplane when he conducts research in the Arctic. Christof told me that it is indeed as I had suspected.
“Clouds cool down. They lose heat to space, especially at the top. If you don’t wear a jacket in colder weather, you also lose heat and start to freeze. The cold air at the top of the cloud then falls downwards and air vortices bring some warmer air back up to compensate. This makes ‘freezing’ a little more bearable for the cloud,” he explains.