Shape of Fair Weather Clouds
Yong Wang, Giovanni Zocchi · Physical Review Letters · 2010
We introduce a model which accounts for the shape of cumulus clouds exclusively in terms of thermal plumes or thermals. The plumes are explicitly represented by a simple potential flow generated by singularities (sources and sinks) and are thus laminar, but with their motion create a field which supports the cloud. We compare this model with actual clouds by means of various shape descriptors including the fractal dimension, and find agreement.