Howdy everyone and thanks for continuing on with module 8. And in my opinion, I think this video might be the most important to understand when we get to our um inclement weather module because in this video we're going to talk about more details on how clouds form exactly and ultimately that leads to precipitation and the other inclement weather events that we'll talk about. But remember cloud formation requires two conditions. We need the air to be saturated and we need cloud nuclei. Now, this video is going to talk about the many different ways that we can saturate the air. Usually, it's by lifting air to different um altitudes at two different temperatures, which can cause things to cool and condense and form our clouds. But we'll talk about the many different ways we can get that in this video. So there are four main different types of mechanisms that form our clouds of precipitation. There's orographic, there's convection, there's cyclonic, and there's frontal. And I'm going to talk about each of these here in more detail. Starting with orapic. Now, oric precipitation is when we have warm, moist air that is being forced over usually a mountain barrier. And as air cools, because it's as we rise, remember the temperature is getting colder as we go up in our tro troposphere. As that air is being forced up, it's going to cool and condensation is going to occur, forming a cloud base. Now, a classic example of where this happens is the west coast of the United States. We have moist Pacific air approaching the Cascades and it forces that air upwards where it condenses and precipitates. Now, you might know the northwest US coast is known for their wet climate. However, on the other side of the Cascades, not many people know is actually a desert. And this is exactly the process that explains that. So, as warm, moist air is forced up, it's going to cool. As it cools, it's going to condense. And when it starts condensing, we're going to form clouds. And when those clouds get heavy enough, they're going to form precipitation. And this is where we have a mountain barrier that's forcing the air to rise. Next is our convectional precipitation. This occurs because the surface of the earth is being heated by the sun and it's causing evaporation adding water vapor to our atmosphere. But what happens to warm things? Warm warm air likes to rise. So the air above the land is also warming up. It's containing this water vapor that's being evaporated from the surface and it's going to rise because warm air likes to rise. And as the air begins to rise, it's going to expand and cool and condense again forming clouds in a different way. So instead of being forced up over mountains because they're in our way, this is the sun is causing heating and the warm air is just rising due to that convection and that can also form clouds. So sometimes we get those summer popup storms. This is exactly why. Then we have our cyclonic precipitation. This occurs because of air pressure differences. And remember when we have air pressure differences, this causes the air to move. Now, low pressure cells at the surface causes convergence. So where we have low pressure, we have air moving into low pressure, remember? And they're all converging at the center of that low pressure and it's going to cause the air to rise. And when it rises, it's going to expand and cool. And if it cools far enough and hits that due point, it's going to condense and form clouds. Now, this is why we don't get cloud formation at high pressure centers because the air is moving away from high pressure centers. The air is sinking. We need air to rise. That's key. We need air to rise to form our clouds. And then finally, we have frontal precipitation. This involves those air masses we talked about in the last video. Air can be forced upward through movement of these air masses because warm air will rise above colder air. And when we have warmer air rising, it's going to expand, it's going to cool, and it's going to condense. So here we have two different fronts. This is a cold front. Anytime you see cold fronts on a weather map, they're going to be um represented by blue and blue triangles. And the triangles are going to point in the direction that the front is moving. So in cold fronts, we have cold um air masses that are advancing. So we have a cold air mass that are moving this direction and it's hitting warm air. And when it hits that warm air, it's going to force that warm air up over it forming clouds and it's going to form precipitation. And these are responsible for a lot of inclement weather that we'll talk about. A lot of those storm fronts are because of cold fronts. Now we can also get um cloud formation and sometimes precipitation due to warm fronts. So warm fronts are represented by these red half circles and the half circles are pointing in the direction of movement but this time we have warm air that is advancing and it is advancing um and hitting up against some receding cold air. So that warm air is still going to be forced upwards over that colder air and form clouds and sometimes precipitation. Now, most of our inclement weather is actually associated with cold fronts and not warm fronts, but we'll get to those again when we get to our inclement weather modules. But that's just a quick primer on to the four different ways that we can we can get clouds to form. And of course, that could lead to precipitation and other inclement weather. And then in our next and final video, we'll introduce the jetream, which is responsible for moving a lot of the weather patterns and our air masses, especially in the mid latitudes. I'll see you there.