Kelvin–Helmholtz instability
Alright, imagine you are playing with playdough, and you roll two different colored balls and put them next to each other. Now imagine that one of the balls is sticky and the other is not. What do you think will happen?
Well, the sticky ball will start to pull at the other one, and little by little they will stick together until they are just one big ball of two different colors. This is sort of what happens in the atmosphere, but instead of playdough, it's air.
Sometimes, the air in the atmosphere moves at different speeds and has different temperatures. This can make one layer of air want to stick to another layer of air, just like the sticky playdough ball.
When this happens, it can create these wave-like patterns in the clouds, and it's called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. It's named after two scientists who figured out why this happens.
So basically, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is when two layers of air with different temperatures and speeds touch each other, and it creates cool-looking waves in the clouds!
Well, the sticky ball will start to pull at the other one, and little by little they will stick together until they are just one big ball of two different colors. This is sort of what happens in the atmosphere, but instead of playdough, it's air.
Sometimes, the air in the atmosphere moves at different speeds and has different temperatures. This can make one layer of air want to stick to another layer of air, just like the sticky playdough ball.
When this happens, it can create these wave-like patterns in the clouds, and it's called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. It's named after two scientists who figured out why this happens.
So basically, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is when two layers of air with different temperatures and speeds touch each other, and it creates cool-looking waves in the clouds!