Outline the historic development of the cloud classification system used today
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER: Clouds were first formally identified and classified early in the nineteenth century. The French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) proposed the first system for classifying clouds in 1802; however, his work did not receive wide acclaim. One year later, Luke Howard, an English naturalist, developed a cloud classification system that found general acceptance. In essence, Howard's innovative system employed Latin words to describe clouds as they appear to a ground observer. He named a sheetlike cloud stratus (Latin for "layer"); a puffy cloud cumulus ("heap"); a wispy cloud cirrus ("curl of hair"); and a rain cloud nimbus ("violent rain"). In Howard's system, these were the four basic cloud forms. Other clouds could be described by combining the basic types. For example, nimbostratus is a rain cloud that shows layering, whereas cumulonimbus is a rain cloud having pronounced vertical development. In 1887, Ralph Abercromby and Hugo Hildebrandsson expanded Howard's original system and published a classification system that, with only slight modification, is still in use today. Ten principal cloud forms are divided into four primary cloud groups. Each group is identified by the height of the cloud's base above the surface: high clouds, middle clouds, and low clouds. The fourth group contains clouds showing more vertical than horizontal development. Within each group, cloud types are identified by their appearance.?
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