ctivities
Day 1 - Warm-up
Explain to the students that you will be assessing their prior knowledge of the charac-
teristics of cloud types. To do this, you will show them slides or illustrations of various
types of clouds. Be sure not to present the clouds in any sort of order. Describe each
cloud as you present them with phrases such as “puffy or heap-like” for cumuliform or
“layered or sheet-like” for stratiform clouds.
- After all slides have been viewed, assign each cooperative group to a workstation
and distribute the set of index cards with the cloud information. Instruct students to
classify the cards into two or more groups, based upon criteria they choose.
- After each group has completed their classification, have them share their classifica-
tion criteria with the class.
- Have students answer the first two questions on the worksheet,
After they have answered questions (1) and
(2), explain to students that they will classify clouds on the basis of their cloud
height because the imagery provides temperature information which is directly
related to cloud height. (Cloud temperature decreases as the altitude increases.)
- To see how the temperature varies with cloud height, ask students to use the stan-
dard atmosphere data provided on their worksheets to make a graph of the
decrease in temperature with altitude. These temperature differences can be
detected on infrared photographs. They should sketch the different cloud types
found in each of the three layers, described as simply low, medium, or high on
their. Their completed should resemble figure 1.
Display one infrared APT image - large enough for the entire class to see - that con-
tains examples of all three cloud types as classified by height.
Point out the relatively dark and warmer surfaces along with the familiar geographic
feature you’ve included (such as the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay estuary, or the Baja
peninsula). If you are working with an image at an active ground station, use the
imaging software to reveal surface temperatures at various points on the image. Then
point out the low, middle, and high cloud types and their resulting appearance on APT
infrared imagery.
CL A S S I F I C AT I O N O F CL O U D TY P E S
TH R O U G H IN F R A R E D APT IM A G E RY
A
