Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Weather inquiry - How are colorful clouds formed?

How are colorful clouds formed?

Generally, the clouds you see are white. When there are clouds in the sky, many people are curious about why there are clouds. The following is the reason why the colorful clouds I made for you formed. I hope it works for you.

Reasons for the formation of colorful clouds

Thick layered clouds, or cumulonimbus clouds, the light from the sun and the moon is difficult to transmit, and the clouds look black; Slightly thinner layered clouds and wave clouds look gray, especially in wave clouds, and the edges of the clouds are grayer; Very thin clouds, light can easily penetrate, especially thin clouds made of ice crystals. Clouds are especially bright and silky in the sun. Even if there are such layered clouds in the sky, objects on the ground will still reflect shadows under the illumination of the sun and the moon.

Sometimes the clouds are so thin that you can hardly see them, but as long as you find one or several big rings near the sun and the moon, you can still tell that there are clouds. This cloud is called "cirrostratus with a thin curtain". Isolated cumulus clouds, because the clouds are thick, almost all the light is reflected to the sunny side, so it looks white; On the backlight side and its bottom, the light is not easily transmitted and looks gray and black.

At sunrise and sunset, due to the oblique light from the sun, molecules, water vapor and impurities in the air pass through the thick atmosphere, which makes the short-wave part of light scatter a lot, while the long-wave part of red and orange does not scatter much. Therefore, when it irradiates the lower atmosphere, long-wave light, especially red light, accounts for an absolute majority. At this time, not only the sky in the direction of sunrise and sunset is red, but also the bottom and edge of the cloud illuminated by it turn red.

Because clouds are composed of water droplets, ice crystals and a mixture of the two, when the sun and the moon pass by, they will also cause various beautiful rings of light or iridescence.

Formation conditions of colorful auspicious clouds

1, a cloud located at the sun 10 to 40 degrees;

2. Clouds are thin clouds with uniform water droplets, such as altocumulus clouds and cirrocumulus, especially lenticular clouds. Rare clouds such as mother-of-pearl will form very bright clouds;

On a sunny day.

Historical allusions of colorful auspicious clouds

Commonly used rare colorful clouds

Compare "kingly way". As the kingly way in the terminology used by Yin and Yang experts, the colorful clouds or solar halos are also called "Tian Zi Qi" or "Wang Qi", and later they are called "Qingyun", "Jing Yun" or "Colorful Xiangyun" in The Journey to the West. Feudal emperors deified themselves with the image of light to show that they were "holding the emperor to make the princes", which was a real "dragon species".

At the Hongmen banquet, Fan Zeng advised Xiang Yu to attack Liu Bang, saying, "I am very popular, and all of them are dragons and tigers. This son of heaven is also angry. Don't lose it. " Another example is the 29th edition of The Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties written by Chu people in the Qing Dynasty, in which "the maids of two houses in Yang Di travel together in the same boat": "A man was about to step down, but suddenly he saw a red air in the northwest, like a dragon pattern, rushing up. Violet suddenly saw it and was surprised. She quickly said,' This son of heaven is angry! "Why?" Yang-ti looked back and really saw the red light, which was a colorful group and reflected for a long time. It was strange, but he was also surprised. He asked,' How do you know it's the son of heaven?' Purple flue:' colorful patterns, like dragons and phoenixes, why not? Where you are angry, there are strangers in it. " "

Folk proverbs of colorful auspicious clouds

There is a saying that the refraction of light by the atmosphere occurs when there is a lot of water in the atmosphere, but it occurs in the clouds. Before the earthquake, nature's forecast: colorful clouds in the sky, chickens on trees, dogs climbing over walls, snakes on the road and toads jumping around; It means that there will be a big earthquake, and the longest time will not exceed 24 hours.