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Cirrocumulus cloud

 
Cirrocumulus Cloud

 
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Cirrocumulus cloud
 
 
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Cirrocumulus clouds are high-altitude clouds that usually occur at 16,000-40,000 feet. Like other cumulus clouds, cirrocumulus clouds signify convection
Convection

Convection in the most general terms refers to the movement of molecules within fluids . Convection is one of the major modes of heat transfer and mass transfer....
. Unlike other cirrus cloud
Cirrus cloud

Cirrus clouds are characterized by thin, wisplike strands, often accompanied by tufts, leading to their common name of mare's tail. Sometimes these clouds are so extensive that they are virtually indistinguishable from one another, forming a sheet of cirrus called Cirrostratus cloud....
s, cirrocumulus include liquid water droplets, although these are in a supercooled state. Ice crystals are also present, and typically, the ice crystals cause the supercooled water drops in the cloud to rapidly freeze, transforming the cirrocumulus into cirrostratus.






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Cirrocumulus clouds are high-altitude clouds that usually occur at 16,000-40,000 feet. Like other cumulus clouds, cirrocumulus clouds signify convection
Convection

Convection in the most general terms refers to the movement of molecules within fluids . Convection is one of the major modes of heat transfer and mass transfer....
. Unlike other cirrus cloud
Cirrus cloud

Cirrus clouds are characterized by thin, wisplike strands, often accompanied by tufts, leading to their common name of mare's tail. Sometimes these clouds are so extensive that they are virtually indistinguishable from one another, forming a sheet of cirrus called Cirrostratus cloud....
s, cirrocumulus include liquid water droplets, although these are in a supercooled state. Ice crystals are also present, and typically, the ice crystals cause the supercooled water drops in the cloud to rapidly freeze, transforming the cirrocumulus into cirrostratus. This process can also produce precipitation in the form of a virga
Virga

In meteorology, virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground. At high altitudes the precipitation falls mainly as ice crystals before melting and finally evaporating; this is usually due to compressional heating, because the atmospheric pressure increases closer...
 consisting of ice or snow. Thus cirrocumulus clouds are usually short-lived.

Properly, the term cirrocumulus refers to each cloud, but is typically also used to refer to an entire patch of cirrocumulus. When used in this way, each cirrocumulus element is referred to as a "cloudlet".

Appearance

A cirrocumulus is typically a small, white patch or tuft without a gray shadow. It occurs in patches or sheets along with other cirrocumulus. These often are organized in rows like other cumulus, but since they are so small, cirrocumulus patches take on a finer appearance, sometimes referred to colloquially as "herringbone" or "mackerel". As cirrocumulus consists of water droplets, it does not have the distinctive veil-like or fibrous look of other Family A clouds, and consists of separate "cloudlets" that resemble altocumulus.

The cirrocumulus is distinguished from the somewhat similar altocumulus in several ways, although the two cloud types can occasionally occur together with no clear demarcation between them. Cirrocumulus generally occur at higher altitudes than altocumulus, and thus the "cloudlets" appear smaller as they are more distant from observation at ground level. They are also colder. Cirrocumulus clouds never cast self-shadows and are translucent to certain degree. They are also typically found amongst other cirrus clouds in the sky, and are usually themselves seen to be transforming into these other types of cirrus.