'New' Clouds Earn Atlas Recognition

Twelve "new" types of cloud -- including the rare, wave-like asperitas cloud -- have been recognized for the first time by the International Cloud Atlas. From a report: The atlas, which dates back to the 19th Century, is the global reference book for observing and identifying clouds. Last revised in 1987, its new fully-digital edition includes the asperitas after campaigns by citizen scientists. Other new entries include the roll-like volutus, and contrails, clouds formed from the vapour trail of aeroplanes. Since its first publication in 1896, the International Cloud Atlas has become an important reference tool for people working in meteorological services, aviation and shipping. The first edition contained 28 coloured photographs and set out detailed standards for classifying clouds. The last full edition was published in 1975 with a revision in 1987, which quickly became a collector's item. Now, embracing the digital era, the new atlas will initially be available as a web portal, and accessible to the public for the first time.

At last an article about clouds that makes sense

[klubar]

I thought "The Cloud" was just another term for someone else's computer.

Back in my day, we called it timesharing. Long life TSS/8, TSO and Multics (and their friends).

Now you kids get off my lawn.

Chemtrail Documentation?

[SlashGodet]

People sending pix of (suspicious) clouds to the Cloud Appreciation Society, a citizen science body, led to this "classification" into supposedly normal cloud types. According to the article. Classification does not make the clouds normal.

New Species, Volutus Roll-Cloud

[SlashGodet]

"a low horizontal tube-shaped cloud mass that appears to roll about a horizontal axis" has been added to the catalog.

Re:

[sarku]

No joke, like, "Oh, we never really noticed those clouds before..." gimme a friggin break

Re:

[ljw1004]

I thought "The Cloud" was just another term for someone else's computer. Back in my day, we called it timesharing. Long life TSS/8, TSO and Multics (and their friends).

Now you kids get off my lawn.

I think that misses the point. "The Cloud" refers to the commoditized outsourcing of certain aspects of maintaining a set of servers while keeping control of other aspects. Like: if you outsource the nothing, then it's a machine in your building that you bought/built yourself. If you outsource just rackspace, then it's an datacenter from the 90s. If you outsource hosting a VM, or scaleability, or distributed load balancing / replication, or worldwide redundancy, or keeping the host OS up-to-date with patche

Amazon

[Oswald McWeany]

Hope Amazon won't make these clouds all crash too!

Cloud Atlas

[Anonymous Coward]

That movie sucked so hard. The Wachowskis had some balls putting their name to it...

Thank you Cloud Appreciation Society

[neo-mkrey]

Thanks to your hard work and diligence, we now officially have the Asperitas cloud type.

{https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/}

usedtoCR

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to live and work in Cedar Rapids. I remember walking out of our office building in downtown on the day that the asperitas clouds were overhead. I remember thinking right away that there was something very unique about the clouds. I took a few pics and then used my BB messenger to alert my co-workers to come outside too (This was in 2006 when BlackBerry reigned). It was a spectacular sight! It sounds cheesy but it seriously was amazing. I spent the rest of my lunch hour catching glimpses of the sky un

Cloud Atlas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this what that Tom Hanks movie was about?

How To Rede and Spel Gud

[Applehu Akbar]

When did asperatus, the original name, morph into asperitas?

I have pictures of this cloud type, taken on a local hike January 2013 in central Arizona.

Not cumulonimbus

[coinreturn]

No, that's a horsey!