Self-organized criticality in cumulus clouds

The shape of clouds has proven to be essential for classifying them. Our analysis of images from fair weather cumulus clouds reveals that, in addition to turbulence, they are driven by self-organized criticality. Our observations yield exponents that support the fact the clouds, when projected to two dimensions, exhibit conformal symmetry compatible with c =−2 conformal field theory. By using a combination of the Navier-Stokes equation, diffusion equations, and a coupled map lattice, we successfully simulated cloud formation, and obtained the same exponents.