Abstract
MR. BARRETT has misunderstood the main point of the note to which he refers. Meteorologists do not expect cumulus clouds to be in static equilibrium, but on the contrary to be associated with rising air currents composed normally of air that is less dense than its environment at the same level. If observations showed that the rising air were warmer than its environment, the lower density of the former would be easily explained, but observations show that it is often colder, and the problem is to explain the anomaly of cold air rising as a result presumably of convection, since these clouds are normally regarded as of convectional origin. The reports of pilots of gliders merely confirm what has long been known to meteorologists, for example, from the behaviour of pilot balloons on encountering cumulus clouds.
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Conditions in Cumulus Cloud. Nature 137, 406 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137406c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137406c0
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