“clouds, the patron goddesses of the layabout. From
them come our intelligence, our dialectic and our reason.”

—Aristophanes

From the ancient Chaldeans to modern climate modelers, clouds have been the self-ruining objects of timeless fascination and wonder. And why not. What better to ponder on a beautiful summer day, anywhere on this planet of ours, than those remnants of distant storms. Yet for all the brainpower and technological know-how of modern-day climate scientists, it’s remarkable how little we knew about these ethereal phantoms until very, very recently. In fact, what scientists knew about clouds just 50 years ago wasn’t much different than their Babylonian and Chaldean predecessors, who compiled the earliest known records of clouds, thousands of years ago.

“When a cloud grows dark in heaven,” noted one anonymous Chaldean weatherman, “a wind will blow.” Unbeknownst to that Chaldean weatherman, his contemporaries in the Chinese Shang dynasty were observing the same parade of clouds across the heavens. Chinese scholars theorized that careful observations and quantifiable data would enable them to deconstruct weather into knowable, measurable parts. In fact, they were the first ‘scientists’ to use charcoal to gauge the relative humidity (RH) of air, an achievement that predates Pericles and the Golden Age of Greece by two millennia.

Centuries later, Taoists anticipated discoveries by modern meteorologists when they established a Ministry of Thunder and a God of Clouds, but it wasn’t until Aristotle cast his eyes skyward and composed his extraordinary treatise, Meteorologicia, that clouds found a permanent home in science. Parting company with his Oriental predecessors, the great Hellenic metaphysician described clouds as a mixing of vapors that were drawn from both the upper atmosphere and terra firma, a great rising and falling and commingling of moisture trapped in perpetual motion by the attraction of the earth and the repulsing power of stars. His insightful musings framed the debate about clouds for nearly two thousand years, when scientific advancements in the Age of Enlightenment, combined with the theoretical genius of Rene Descartes, set the science of clouds on the course where we find it today.

Remarkably, Descartes speculated that clouds were made up of tiny water droplets and particles of ice formed by compressed vapor. This vapor, he reasoned, escapes from both the ground and bodies of water to form these lighter-than-air heaps in the sky that we call clouds. But just how these processes worked in the atmosphere to influence our climate would remain a mystery for another two centuries, when19th century scientists, armed with newfangled tools such as thermometers and barometers, took their questions into the sky in hot air balloons. Yet even as they ascended to dizzying heights above Paris and London, it never occurred to these intrepid aerialists that clouds should have names.

That taxonomic threshold would be crossed in 1802 by an unassuming young English chemist named Luke Howard, now known as the Father of Meteorology. On a rainy December evening, Howard stood before a small gathering of scientists at Plough Court, in London, and uttered a new family of words derived from Latin: Cirrus, Stratus, Cumulus. Howard’s taxonomy for clouds was broken into three basic groups, with four divisions within each group.   Clouds, he argued, were as distinct from each other as chickens are distinct from trees. Cirrus were clouds shaped like wisps of hair; Cumulus clouds build into piles and heaps, and finally; Stratus clouds are layered in sheets. Each member of the cloud family is shaped by distinct climatic phenomena.

Howard’s prosaic title, “On the Modifications of Clouds,” belied a daring proposal that would forever alter the way scientists look at the sky.  By the time meteorologists added Nimbostratus a century later, Howard’s taxonomy had become a universal fixture of everyday language. Today, clouds arrive in our midst with the names of Roman gods: Undulatus, Cumulonimbus Incus, Fibratus, and Lenticularis, among numerous others, and announce their entrance with stinging hail and deadly tails, or a shadow drifting across a field of ripe grain. Howard’s achievement set the stage for the next great leap forward, but the adventure commenced by the Chaldeans and Chinese would have to wait until 20th century rocket technology punched a hole in the sky. Then, at long last, the intellectual descendants of Aristotle could begin to investigate the role played by clouds in our global climate.  (Part II of this story, next week.)

In the meantime, I’ve put together a little test so that you can measure your own understanding of clouds and the role they play in our global weather.  The answers might surprise you!

1)  Who were the first scientists to use charcoal to gauge the relative humidity of air?

a.  the Phoenicians

b.  the Egyptians

c.  the Italians

d.  early Christians

e.  the Chinese

2)  Finish this sentence (good luck):  Clouds are…

a.  a figment of our imaginations

b.  atmospheric ephemera

c.  the discarded garments of angels

d.  among the most violent phenomena in nature

3)  The term ‘albedo’ refers to the relative ________________ of a cloud?

a. density

b.  height, from bottom to top.

c.  the speed at which it moves over the ground

d.  its relative brightness

4)  In climatology, the term ‘entrain’ means…

a.  a cluster of clouds

b.  a sky with different formations at different altitudes

c.  to gather in particles

d.  to merge one cloud with another

5)  The single most important cloud formation in the global climate engine is which of the following?

a.   Cirrus

b.  Undulatus

c.  Lenticularis

d.  Cumulonimbus

e.  O Solo Mio

6)  Who is famous for this quote: “Clouds are the patron goddesses of the layabout. From them come our intelligence, our dialectic and our reason.”

a.  Thomas Jefferson

b.  Shakespeare

c.  Milton

d.  Aristophanes

e.  Chaucer

f.  Saint Paul

And now, the envelope please…..

1) e    2) d    3) d    4) c    5) d    6) d

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