Question about cummulus maximum height.

[slow_learner]

God morning-afternoon everyone. 

I have a question.

Since cummulus are convective clouds, as long as there is convection, an ascending parcel of air will eventually saturate and form a cummulus cloud. But when will the ascension stop? is it there some way of estimating the maximum height of the cloud or is just the tropopause which stops it?

Thank you very much for any anwser.

[knocker]

22 hours ago, slow_learner said:

God morning-afternoon everyone. 

I have a question.

Since cummulus are convective clouds, as long as there is convection, an ascending parcel of air will eventually saturate and form a cummulus cloud. But when will the ascension stop? is it there some way of estimating the maximum height of the cloud or is just the tropopause which stops it?

Thank you very much for any anwser.

Put very simplistically once the parcel of air has reached the lifting condensation level it will continue to cool along the saturated adiabatic lapse rate and if it warmer than the environmental temperature it is in an area of free convection and it will continue to rise freely on it's own accord without requiring a lifting mechanism ( e.g. upper level divergence, lower level convergence). Quite important because much of the work producing the cloud is done by the parcel rising on it's own ( a key factor in thunderstorm development). It will continue to rise freely until it's temperature becomes cooler than the environment, called the equilibrium level (EL).. You can work this out using a skew-t diagram and, fairly obviously, it is not necessarily at the tropopause but with large convective clouds such as Cbs in probably will be but in other circumstances the EL will act as a cap.

You do very often of coarse need a mechanism to lift the parcel to the area of free convection 

Edited June 15, 2018 by knocker

[slow_learner]

On ‎15‎/‎06‎/‎2018 at 09:51, knocker said:

Put very simplistically once the parcel of air has reached the lifting condensation level it will continue to cool along the saturated adiabatic lapse rate and if it warmer than the environmental temperature it is in an area of free convection and it will continue to rise freely on it's own accord without requiring a lifting mechanism ( e.g. upper level divergence, lower level convergence). Quite important because much of the work producing the cloud is done by the parcel rising on it's own ( a key factor in thunderstorm development). It will continue to rise freely until it's temperature becomes cooler than the environment, called the equilibrium level (EL).. You can work this out using a skew-t diagram and, fairly obviously, it is not necessarily at the tropopause but with large convective clouds such as Cbs in probably will be but in other circumstances the EL will act as a cap.

You do very often of coarse need a mechanism to lift the parcel to the area of free convection 

Thanks for your anwser.