The long and rich life of tropical clouds: Understanding environmental conditions that help tropical clouds flourish

Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory uncovered another clue as to how tropical clouds live long and prosper. Moisture from the middle layer of the atmosphere, both before and after the clouds begin forming, is the determining factor for the lifetime of these cloud systems. When the researchers compared clouds of equal lifetime that initiate over land and over water, those over land were more intense than those beginning over the ocean, especially during the early stages. Contrary to previous studies, they found that wind shear-the change in wind speed and direction-has no discernible effect on the lifetime of the tropical cloud systems.

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