Wave cloud
a cloud form created by atmospheric internal waves.
A wave cloud is a cloud form created by atmospheric internal waves.
Formation
The atmospheric internal waves that form wave clouds are created as stable air flows over a raised land feature such as a mountain range, and can form either directly above or in the lee of the feature. As an air mass travels through the wave, it undergoes repeated uplift and descent. If there is enough moisture in the atmosphere, clouds will form at the cooled crests of these waves. In the descending part of the wave, those clouds will evaporate due to adiabatic heating, leading to the characteristic clouded and clear bands. The cloud base on the leeward side is higher than on the windward side, because precipitation on the windward side removes water from the air.
It is possible that simple convection from mountain summits can also form wave clouds. This occurs as the convection forces a wave or lenticular wave cloud into the more stable air above.
Importance
Climate modelling
Wave clouds are typically mid- to upper-tropospheric ice clouds. They are relatively easy to study, because they are quite consistent.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wave cloud” as a cloud form created by atmospheric internal waves. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as a cloud form created by atmospheric internal waves. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3075081. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wave cloud” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.