A sea of clouds is an

overcast Overcast or overcast weather, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization, is the meteorological condition of clouds obscuring at least 95% of the sky. However, the total cloud cover must not be entirely due to obscuring phenomena near ...

layer of

stratocumulus cloud A stratocumulus cloud, occasionally called a cumulostratus, belongs to a genus-type of clouds characterized by large dark, rounded masses, usually in groups, lines, or waves, the individual elements being larger than those in altocumulus, and t ...

s, as viewed from above, with a relatively uniform top which shows undulations of very different lengths resembling waves on the sea. A sea of fog is formed from

stratus cloud Stratus clouds are low-level clouds characterized by horizontal layering with a uniform base, as opposed to convective or cumuliform clouds formed by rising thermals. The term ''stratus'' describes flat, hazy, featureless clouds at low altit ...

s or

fog Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus and is heavily influenc ...

and does not show undulations. In both cases, the phenomenon looks very similar to the open ocean. The comparison is even more complete if some mountain peaks rise above the clouds, thus resembling islands.

Formation

A sea of clouds forms generally in valleys or over seas in very stable

air mass In meteorology, an air mass is a volume of air defined by its temperature and humidity. Air masses cover many hundreds or thousands of square miles, and adapt to the characteristics of the surface below them. They are classified according to ...

conditions such as in a

temperature inversion In meteorology, an inversion (or temperature inversion) is a phenomenon in which a layer of warmer air overlies cooler air. Normally, air temperature gradually decreases as altitude increases, but this relationship is reversed in an inver ...

. Humidity can then reach saturation and condensation leads to a very uniform stratocumulus cloud, stratus cloud or fog. Above this layer, the air must be dry. This is a common situation in a

high-pressure area A high-pressure area, high, or anticyclone, is an area near the surface of a planet where the atmospheric pressure is greater than the pressure in the surrounding regions. Highs are middle-scale meteorological features that result from interpl ...

with cooling at the surface by

radiative cooling In the study of heat transfer, radiative cooling is the process by which a body loses heat by thermal radiation. As Planck's law describes, every physical body spontaneously and continuously emits electromagnetic radiation. Radiative cooling has b ...

at night in summer, or advection of cold air in winter or in a

marine layer A marine layer is an air mass that develops over the surface of a large body of water, such as an ocean or large lake, in the presence of a Inversion (meteorology), temperature inversion. The inversion itself is usually initiated by the cooling ...

Artistic uses

* The term ''Sea of Clouds'' (雲海) is a Chinese poetic term for the surroundings of a mountain's summit, such as the one at

Huangshan Huangshan ( zh, s=黄山),Bernstein, pp. 125–127. literally meaning the Yellow Mountain(s), is a mountain range in southern Anhui province in eastern China. It was originally called "Yishan", and it was renamed because of a legend that Em ...

. * ''

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog ''Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'' is a painting by German Romanticist artist Caspar David Friedrich made in 1818. It depicts a man standing upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer; he is gazing out on a landscape covered in a thick se ...

'' is an

oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...

composed in 1818 by the

German Romantic German Romanticism () was the dominant intellectual movement of German-speaking countries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, influencing philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and criticism. Compared to English Romanticism, the German var ...

artist

Caspar David Friedrich Caspar David Friedrich (; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romanticism, German Romantic Landscape painting, landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti ...

depicting this phenomenon.

References

Clouds {{Cloud-stub