A walk in the clouds

Imagine, dear reader, you’re lying peacefully on your back, looking up into a gentle sky, adorned with pretty clouds. Those soft, fluffy formations can seem almost like pillows for the divine, sometimes letting in a gleam of golden sunlight, at times, providing cool, shaded respite. A cloud evokes abstractions — loves gone by, sadness borne alongside joys born, harvests for the traditional, monsoon ‘vacays’ for the mod. But interestingly, most of us imagine clouds as fleeting puffs of floating feelings, transitory visitors in our everyday skies, with whom our relationship is polite but distant, like meeting a guest in someone else’s house.
We couldn’t be more wrong. Humanity’s link with the clouds above our heads is incredibly powerful for these are made by life on Earth — and shape it. Clouds are composed of water vapour which evaporates from Earth into the atmosphere. As air itself rises from Earth to ether, it cools. It can’t hold much water and grows saturated, with vapour condensing. As this changes from gas to liquid, it forms tiny droplets which cling to particles in the sky — this group becomes visible as a cloud. From altostratus to stratocumulus, there are ten kinds of basic clouds and 27 cloud formations. Importantly, each has an impact on you. Clouds carry water and the amount they disburse decides how much time you could spend navigating a drenched city — or if your town will face an enervating water shortage.
In the longer term, clouds have another superpower — they reflect heat. The trouble is, depending on the cloud variety, they either reflect heat out into space — which lowers global warming — or back onto Earth, which increases it. Here is where another of nature’s astonishing links comes to light — you decide this. As we humans keep releasing fossil fuel-based greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are increasing particles which trap heat. These become clouds which radiate warmth back at us, emphasising nature’s rather ironical sense of balance. With the Anthropocene — the era of human impacts reshaping Earth — it is no wonder scientists are now literally researching darkening clouds. However, there are better possibilities still. As Times Evoke’s global experts emphasise, awareness is key. Many of us never knew of the deep connection, organic and alchemic, between us and the clouds. In-depth scientific education is core to building greater environmental mindfulness now. Alongside, tempering our emissions is central for calming an otherwise inevitable climatic storm. Join Times Evoke for a walk in the clouds — which will take you back to your life on Earth.