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The Atlas provides a common language to communicate cloud observations, and ensures consistency in reporting by observers around the world. It serves as a training tool for meteorologists, as well as for those working in aeronautical and maritime environments, and it has become popular with weather enthusiasts and cloud spotters.
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The International Cloud Atlas or simply the Cloud Atlas, is a cloud atlas that was first published in 1896[1] and has remained in print since. Its initial purposes included aiding the training of meteorologists and promoting more consistent use of vocabulary describing clouds, which were both important for early weather forecasting. The first edition featured color plates of color photographs, then still a very new technology, but noted for being expensive. Numerous later editions have been published.
Publication of the first edition was arranged by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson, Albert Riggenbach, and Léon Teisserenc de Bort, members of the Clouds Commission of the International Meteorological Committee aka International Meteorological Organization (now the World Meteorological Organization).[1] It consists of color plates of clouds, and text in English, French, and German. Consequently, it had separate title pages in each language and is known also by its alternate titles Atlas international des nuages and Internationaler Wolkenatlas. These were selected by the Clouds Commission, which also included Julius von Hann, Henrik Mohn, and Abbott Lawrence Rotch.[2]
The first edition featured printed color plates, rather than hand-colored plates. Most of the plates were color photographs, but also some paintings. A cirrus cloud was the first type of cloud illustrated, from a color photograph.[1] At the time, color photography was new, complicated, and expensive. Consequently, the Clouds Commission was unable to obtain suitable color photographs of all the cloud types, and they selected paintings to use as substitutes.
The first edition was inspired in part by the observation of the English meteorologist Ralph Abercromby that clouds were of the same general kinds everywhere in the world. Abercromby and Hildebrandsson developed a new classification of clouds that was published in an earlier atlas, the 1890 Cloud Atlas by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson, Wladimir Köppen, and Georg von Neumayer.[3] Other, similar works published prior to this were M. Weilbach's Nordeuropas Sky-former (Copenhagen, 1881), M. Singer's Wolkentafeln (Munich, 1892), Classificazione delle nubi by the Specola Vaticana (Rome, 1893), and the Rev. W. Clement Ley's Cloudland (London, 1894).
International Cloud Atlas has been published in multiple editions since 1896, including 1911, 1932, 1939, 1956, 1975, 1987 and 2017. The 1932 edition was titled International Atlas of Clouds and of States of the Sky. It was published in Catalan (Atles Internacional dels Núvols i dels Estats del cel) besides the three International Meteorological Organization official languages (English, French and German) because Mr. Rafel Patxot[4], a member of the scientific committee that collaborated with the Meteorological Service of Catalonia, sponsored the whole publication.[5]The 1939 edition modified the title to International Atlas of Clouds and Types of Skies. The 1956 edition was the first published in two volumes, separating text and plates. This lowered costs and facilitated the publication of translated editions. It was translated into Polish in 1959 (Międzynarodowy atlas chmur; atlas skrócony) and Norwegian in 1958 (Internasjonalt skyatlas 1956). A Dutch translation was published in 1967 (Wolkenatlas. Bewerkt naar de Internationale verkorte wolkenatlas van de Meteorologische Wereldorganisatie).
The 1975 edition was published in two volumes 12 years apart: Volume I (text) in 1975 and Volume II (plates) in 1987.[6][7] Its innovations included a new chapter describing clouds from above, as from aircraft. Also, the former classification of hydrometeors was replaced by a classification of meteors, in which the hydrometeors are one group:
The following year, a derivative cloud atlas was published in the United States through the Government Printing Office, titled Illustrative cloud forms for the guidance of observers in the classification of clouds.[11] A reviewer noted "We are not sure that it is desirable that there should be several cloud atlases in existence concurrently; but, probably, administrative difficulties would be raised if in any country copies of the International Cloud Atlas were purchased sufficient in number to supply an entire navy. This, probably, is the reason for the appearance of the present artistic little volume."[12] It copied the International Cloud Atlas, except that it substituted color lithographs.[12]
The International Cloud Atlas was revised numerous times in response to requirements of its principal user community, meteorologists. Nonetheless, it was not sufficient for all users, and consequently a number of other cloud atlases and critiques have been published. A 1901 popular German book about the weather reproduced photographs from the International Cloud Atlas, and one reviewer of the 1901 book judged these reproductions to be its best feature.[13] Atlas photographique des Nuages, a 1912 cloud atlas of grayscale photographs,[14] was praised for its sharp photographs but criticized for not following the International Cloud Classification.[15] The 1923 book, A Cloud Atlas,[16] despite its title is not a cloud atlas. The author, the American meteorologist Alexander George McAdie, then director of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, advocated a classification of clouds that was not typological but rather predictive: a classification that did not merely describe what was before the observer. As McAdie put it, when we look at a cloud we want to know, not what it resembles, but whether it portends fair or foul weather.[16] The book is a discussion of what characteristics of clouds such a classification might take into account.
Sometimes the key to one movie can be suggested by another one. We know that the title refers to early drawings of the shapes and behavior of clouds. Not long ago I saw a Swedish film, "Simon and the Oaks," about a day-dreaming boy who formed a bond with an oak tree. In its limbs, he would lie reading books of imagination and then allow his eyes to rest on the clouds overhead. As he read a book about desert wanderers, the clouds seemed to take shape as a ghostly caravan of camels in procession across the sky.
I was never, ever bored by "Cloud Atlas." On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in "Cloud Atlas" take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it "means," is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.
On World Meteorological Day (23rd March 2017), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its new, online, digitised International Cloud Atlas, the global reference for observing and identifying clouds. It contains several new cloud classifications, including the eagerly-awaited asperitas, a dramatic undulated cloud which has captured media interest and public imagination. The RMetS originally reviewed examples of asperitas provided by Gavin Pretor-Pinney of the Cloud Appreciation Society.
In an age where the Internet has become a primary resource, the new edition will also give the Cloud Atlas a strong online presence. Without this, many alternative atlases have appeared online. This threatens the global standardization of cloud classification, which is one of the primary reasons for the existence of the International Cloud Atlas.
As might be expected, no additions have been made to the 10 genera or primary cloud types. However, a new cloud species has been added: volutus, which occurs within the genera Altocumulus and Stratocumulus. It describes a long, typically low, horizontal, detached tube-shaped cloud mass that often appears to roll slowly about a horizontal axis. When formed through the dynamics of a convective storm, it differs from the supplementary feature arcus in that it is fully detached from other clouds. The Australian morning glory cloud is a non-convective example of this species.
The web format also allows for much richer content and presentation. For instance, there is now an interactive image viewer that allows users to actively highlight features indicated in the captions. This approach is much simpler than that of the 1987 printed Atlas, which involved using a system of numbers around the border of the picture to pinpoint features. Users can also access any supplementary information that might be available, such as thermodynamic soundings, synoptic charts, satellite images and more. With the image viewer, readers can look at two images side by side in order to compare similar but distinct cloud types, or one particular cloud type in different climatic zones or seasons.
The new, 2017 edition of the International Cloud Atlas brings this important document into the digital era. It provides professional and amateur observers of clouds and other meteors with an online resource that can be used as a reference, a training tool and a source of stunning images and descriptions. In addition, it updates and strengthens the language used to classify and report cloud and meteor observations, ensuring the consistency and clear communication that is essential to this field. 041b061a72