Look up! We’ve got 11 new clouds in our skies
ALTHOUGH clouds are an essential part of Britain’s weather – not to mention many of our conversations, most of us don’t have the foggiest about them.
But it turns out that there are actually more varieties than had been thought.
Thanks partly to the efforts of amateur meteorologists, 11 new types will be recognised officially today.
The British Met Office and World Meteorological Organization said it had made the decision after exhaustive research – with many pictures sent in by cloudspotters around the world.
The organisations said they were confident the clouds were regularly occurring weather patterns and not merely one-offs.
One of them is a completely new species of cloud called volutus, which is described in the official Cloud Atlas as ‘long, typically low, horizontal, detached, tube- shaped cloud mass’ that often ‘rolls slowly about’.
Volutus brings the number of official cloud species to 15 – the first significant change to cloud classification since the Seventies. In what may prove controversial, the Cloud Atlas now claims that contrails – or condensation trails – left by aeroplanes can be classified as a cloud, with those that last more than ten minutes called cirrus homogenitus.
Another new cloud on the block is flammagenitus, which forms above forest fires. Also gaining recognition is the ‘ cloud feature’ asperitas – bumpy, wavelike structures beneath different types of cloud.
Its inclusion is a feather in the cap of amateur cloudwatcher Gavin PretorPinney, the British author of the Cloudspotter’s Guide, who has championed its inclusion.