This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category. This cookie is used to enable the currency selector functionality of our website. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Member 001) gave a talk to the WMO in Geneva, Switzerland on World Meteorological Day 2017 to mark the launch of the new edition of the International Cloud Atlas. So we were very pleased that, almost ten years later, Asperitas was finally accepted as an official classification by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). These are now known by the Latin terms ‘fluctus’ and ‘cavum’ respectively.Įver since we first noticed distinctive turbulent waves of cloud back in 2006 in images sent from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, US, we have argued that this formation did not easily fit within the existing naming system. The Atlas also added Latin terms for a few cloud formations that had previously been known only with colloquial names, such as the breaking-wave shaped ‘ Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud’ and the hole-punch shaped ‘ fallstreak hole’. It includes our new Asperitas cloud as a cloud type known as a ‘supplementary feature’ – one that is associated with the main cloud types Altocumulus and Stratocumulus (see the listing for Altocumulus supplementary features and Stratocumulus supplementary features). The 2017 edition on the International Cloud Atlas is now online. The reference work has been revised and added to every few decades or so when a new edition has been published. Almost a century later when the first edition of the International Cloud Atlas came out, the naming system had expanded to ten main types, or ‘genera’, of clouds along with more specific subdivisions. The recognition of the asperitas as a new classification of cloud is a classic example of citizen science, in which observations by the general public, enabled by the technology of smartphones and the web, have influenced the development this most official of classification systems.įirst published in 1896, the International Cloud Atlas was based on the Latin naming system for clouds that has first been proposed in 1802 by Luke Howard. Howard gave names and definitions for a handful of cloud types such as Cumulus, Stratus and Cirrus. It is a new classification of cloud, with a chaotic, turbulent appearance, that was proposed as a possible new cloud type by the Cloud Appreciation Society back in 2008 in response to photographs sent in from our members around the world. This official resource for cloudspotters includes, for the first time, the ‘Asperitas’ cloud. It marked the publication of the latest edition of the World Meteorological Organisation’s definitive reference work on cloud classification: the International Cloud Atlas. World Meteorological Day on Thursday 23 March 2017 was themed on ‘Understanding Clouds’.
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