1. What is the correct order of the following types of clouds in the order of increasing height?
(a) Stratocumulus- Altocumulus- Cirrocumulus
(b) Altocumulus- Stratocumulus- Cirrocumulus
(c) Stratocumulus- Cirrocumulus- Altocumulus
(d) Altocumulus- Cirrocumulus- Stratocumulus
2. The rainfall on Western Ghats is mostly
(a) Convectional
(b) Orographic
(c) Frontal
(d) Convectional or Orographic
3. Consider the following statements:
1. Absolute Humidity is a measure of percentage of water vapour in the atmosphere compared to its full capacity.
2. Relative Humidity is a measure of actual weight of the water vapour present per unit of the atmosphere.
Which of the above statements is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
4. Which of the following coasts is more likely to experience advection fog?
1. Peruvian Coast
2. Namibian Coast
3. Brazilian Coast
Choose the correct alternative using the codes given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 2 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
5. Which of the following can act as hygroscopic particles leading to cloud formation?
1. Salt Particles
2. Dust Particles
3. Silver iodide particles
Choose the correct alternative using the codes given below:
(a) 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 2 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
It’s with great pleasure (& an even greater level of excitement!) that we announce the inclusion of two more awesome features on your Civilsdaily Android App.
Night mode
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Toggle between the reading modes from the left drawer
Thanks for helping us build such an amazing product by staying with us all this while. It is an absolute pleasure to keep listening to your suggestions and write for you guys!
Our mission has always been to create a news app where factual, unbiased, and succinct information could be found. And with your support & love, we will continue to do so for a long, long time to come.
Over the last couple of weeks or so, we have pushed forward a few amazing things –
#1. Launch of the new app!
The latest update is faster, lighter and simply epic! We reimagined the app grounds up and gave it a more classier finish.
A super cool user interface inspired from international design standards
Introduced Blogs on the app
Introduced nightmode & notifications to keep you coming back to us everyday!
We would request all of you to take a moment and revise your ratings on the playstore and help us grow faster! If you haven’t rated us yet, now would be a great time to do so 🙂
#2. Launch of the Civilsdaily offline & online magazine
We are so excited to have finally been able to put our words to print. A well known publisher agreed to partner with us to help remove the tyranny of lacklustre magazines which have plagued the market for IAS aspirants for long.
We will be releasing monthly magazines in both hard copy and soft copy (to be released after a few days) and the first edition is out there in the stands.
For those who wish to order the hard copies online, we will let you know the web address soon. Very soon.
For those who are cool with reading from pdfs, we will have the link up on our website soon enough!
#3. An amazing response to support Civilsdaily
Producing high-quality content can be a costly endeavor. While we were still exploring sustainable revenue options, we thought why not turn to our users and look out for patrons among them to support us in our journey!
Very hesitantly we launched a crowdfunding appeal – Support Civilsdaily & Help us grow on the eve of new year and we have been blown away by the amazing amazing response! No website should expect such generosity from its readers and we are at our wits end to express our gratitude for you all!
You are our heroes and your contributions are keeping everyone motivated here to innovate more and more! We will be surprising you with exclusive compilations every quarter or so!
Its important to analyze the role of water in the atmosphere. Water is present in 3 forms – namely gaseous, liquid and solid.
Lets go through some simple but important definitions
Humidity : A generic term to refer to the amount of water vapour present in the atmosphere.
Absolute Humidity : Its the actual weight of the water vapour(grams) present per unit volume(cubic meter m^3) of the atmosphere. This gives us an estimate of the actual amount of water present in a given atmosphere.
Relative Humidity : The % of water vapour present in the atmosphere compared to its full capacity at a given temperature is called Relative Humidity.
Condensation : Transformation of water vapour into water is called condensation. It releases heat.
Sublimation : When the water vapour directly condenses into solid form, it is called sublimation.
Now, you would’ve guessed, water vapour in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. As you increase the temperature of the air, you increase its water holding capacity. This relationship is best described by the graph below. You can make out, its not linear.
We come to the most important concept of this topic – SATURATION. We will be required to understand what it means, what it can do and most importantly what are the different ways it can happen.
Water in the atmosphere is mostly lying idle. However all the magic happens when saturation point is reached. By Saturation we mean air, at that temperature is incapable of holding any additional moisture. The temperature at which saturation occurs in a given sample of air is known as dew point.
How can we bring about saturation? Well, the most logical thing to say here would be by increasing the amount of water vapour. Thats correct. Another important method would be to bring down the maximum holding capacity of the air by bringing down the temperature of the atmosphere to dew point. The next section will explain why the second method is the most preferred one.
CONDENSATION
After Saturation, Condensation takes place. And when it happens, one of the following will be formed – dew, frost, fog and clouds. Lets see how –
Add Moisture– Pretty obvious. You add more moisture, the relative humidity increases till the saturation point reaches.
Cooling by removing heat – If I remove heat from the atmosphere, I’ll most certainly bring down the temperature to dew point and saturate the air. When condensation takes place within itself on dust particles, its called fog.
Radiation Fog : Occurs on clear nights on land. As we’ve studied earlier, during the night we have relatively cool earth because its not being heated by the sun and much of its infrared radiation can escape to space. Thus fog if formed near the earth’s surface.
Advection Fog : Occurs over cold ocean currents. When we have an already cold surface and moisture laden winds pass through it, they condense. The only difference between Advection and Radiation is the method of cooling. In the first case, we had the surface that was getting cooled while in the second we already had a cool surface to begin with. All cold currents of the world with warm air blowing over them will experience this. Also remember, sea-smoke is almost the opposite of this – when we have cold air and warm water.
Dew : Mostly observed in early morning. When the saturated air comes in contact with cold surfaces like that of leaves, trees, grass, etc.
Frost : Same as above, but in this case the Due Point is below 0^C. This leads to the formation of ice-crystals instead of droplets.
Cooling by adiabatic expansion – If we make the air just rise, it will expand, lose heat and saturate.
Leads to the formation of clouds
Vortices
Supersonic flight
Lets come to one of the most interesting topics – Clouds. Repeating what we’ve already established – adiabatic cooling is responsible for the formation of clouds. Clouds will always have water. If they don’t then its just air, its not a cloud. Its interesting to note that though all clouds have water, they might not rain(precipitate would be a more correct term to use). However for every rainfall there has to be a corresponding cloud.
CLASSIFICATION OF CLOUDS
The general classification of clouds was proposed by Luke Howard in 1803. It was descriptive based on shape and height.
A. On the basis of Shape
Cumulus – A heap or a pile of cotton mass. They look like cotton wool. They are formed at a height of 4K-7K m. They exist is patches and have a flat base.
There’s an timelapse video where you can observe the process happening. The air doesn’t rise much higher than the ground, forms clouds and descends. And these clouds appear and disappear.
Stratus – As the name implies they are layered clouds covering large portions of the sky. Formed due to loss of heat of mixing of air masses. They are spread out and mostly found in the lower heights (as shown in the video).
Cirrus – Cirrus clouds are formed at high altitudes (8K-12K m). They are thin and detached clouds having a feathery appearance.
B. On the basis of Height
As low clouds, middle clouds and high clouds.
In this classification, Luke Howard very intelligently re-uses the terms defined in A. How ?? He notices that all low clouds are generally Stratus and all high clouds are generally Cirrus. Meaning he didn’t have to look for separate words for low and high clouds. Eg. A high Cumulus cloud becomes – cirrocumulus. Similarly a low cumulus cloud becomes stratocumulus.
He, however had to coin a term for middle – ‘Alto’. Eg. Altostratus, Altocumulus implies clouds of middle height.
Nimbus : It is used as an adjective to the above clouds to indicate that these clouds are black or grey suggesting they are rain-bearing. Eg. cumulonimbus clouds are those huge clouds that lead to thunderstorm and lightening.
PRECIPITATION
As we had earlier pointed out, clouds alone cannot give precipitation. While the theory behind cloud formation is understood in science, what happens after cloud formation to result in precipitation is not so clearly understood.
We know one thing for sure, for precipitation to take place, the cloud droplets (10 microns) need to grow in size. A raindrop has 100 times the radius of a cloud droplet. So the cloud droplets have to grow that large in order to overpower the force of gravity and upward turbulence and finally come down.
There are 2 theories proposed in this regard :
I. Collision Coalescence : It assumes that you have differently sized droplets where the large ones collide with the small ones and form bigger particles. Why? the larger ones will be moving at a different pace, hence they are bound to collide with the smaller ones coming in their way. It’s not a very efficient process most of the time, because more often that not, you will have similar cloud droplets, not varying too much in size. There’s not enough of a range of large to small particles to get this going. But on occasion, especially over tropical oceans, this mechanism is thought to dominate.
II. Ice Crystal Formation Theory : Before we discuss this in detail, lets see the different forms in which water exists.
T>0 : Water
-40<T<0 : Supercooled water (This is water thats not frozen but will freeze as soon as it comes in contact with a nuclei)
T<-40 : Ice
This theory assumes that you have supercooled water droplets in the cloud. This could happen because lets say the whole of the cloud or a part of it is below the freezing point. Now some of this supercooled water freezes and becomes ice crystals. Now these ice crystals have the tendency to attract water droplets.
Supercooled water condenses on these ice crystals. This forms the snowflakes. Once this starts falling, it may collide with other water droplets or ice crystals forming Hail. Similarly as they fall and experience a warmer atmosphere, they may melt and convert to rain.
FORMS OF PRECIPITATION
As we noted above, after condensation, the release of moisture is known as precipitation. It can occur in the following forms.
Rain : Precipitation in form of water is called rain.
Drizzle : Is spray like rainfall which is very slow with water droplets having .mm diameter. They mostly happen via stratus clouds.
Snow : As discussed above, when ice crystals come down.
Sleet : When the falling water experiences a cool atmosphere just before touching the earth and freezes forming a sheet.
Hail : Is the most complex of all precipitation. It mostly originates from the cumulonimbus clouds as a result of active turbulence and vertical air currents.
RAINFALL
We will study in detail, the most common form of precipitation – Rainfall.
Rainfall can be classified on the basis of its origin.
Convectional : When air is being heated, it rises up and cools adiabatically. When such cooling appears, it saturates. This leads to cloud formation which may in turn lead to shedding of excess moisture in form of Rain. Such rain doesn’t last long. As you saw, the precondition for such rainfall was the air being heated. Hence this type of rainfall is mainly a feature of equatorial regions particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.
Orographic : It is due to a topographic barrier. When the moist air hits the windward side of a mountain, it is forced to rise which cause it to adiabatically cool and saturate. Hence the windward side receives rain. The cool air descends towards the leeward side making that area dry.
Frontal : Frontal rainfall is a feature of middle latitudes. It will be more clear when we’ve gone through what fronts are in the topic Atmospheric circulations. Just for some conceptual clarity, we say fronts are boundary of two different air masses say warm air mass and cold air mass. When these two airs masses meet, rain might occur. This type of rainfall is called frontal rains.
What are the primary and secondary sanction’s imposed by U.S on Iran? Even though U.S lifted secondary sanction’s but not primary. So, folks please enlighten me on what are the primary sanction’s?
dec 22 for smallest day of year
Every cycle is of 92 days
21 March -21 june
21 june -21 September
21 September -22 December
Then why it is 90 or 89 days for 22 dec-21 March
This village, in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, also holds the record for four siblings who have all cleared the exam. These four brothers are, in descending order of age, Vinay Kumar Singh, Chatrapal Singh, Ajay Kumar Singh, and Shashikant Singh. Vinay Kumar, the oldest, cleared the exam in 1955. He retired as chief secretary of Bihar. Chatrapal was chief secretary of Tamil Nadu.
The offline editions will be released in partnership with UNIQUE PUBLISHERS. Name? Unique Civils | Availability? (Stores listed below) | Price? 100 INR
When are we releasing the pdf version? That should be available on our website by 20th January. It would be priced at 50 INR.
Here’s a list of the shops which are going to stock the magazine copies. As we understand, they already have their stocks with them. Go have a look!
Let us know once you get your hands on them. Truth be told, we haven’t seen the copies yet. Just very much excited to let know you first. Spread the word 🙂
This article focuses on bringing clarity to the two very different concepts which look similar at face value. Sir Ivor Jennings, the famous constitutional historian, characterized the Rule of Law as ‘an unruly horse’.
First, let’s be clear about what the Rule of Law is not.
Rule of Law should not be equated with law and order. The breakdown of law and order is a temporary phenomenon.
Breakdown of the Rule of Law means the collapse of good governance and the breakdown of constitutional machinery in a State.
Now, let’s see what the Rule of Law is.
It may be difficult to define the concept with precision but in essence, it signifies a commitment to certain principles and values. Generally, the rule of law is the principle that no one is above the law and treated equally among citizens.
The Rule of Law symbolizes the quest of civilized democratic societies to combine that degree of liberty without which law is tyranny with that degree of law without which liberty becomes license.
However high you may be, the law is above you.
For instance, One may be the Prime Minister or the Speaker or the Imam or the Archbishop or a judge or the Sankaracharya or whoever, all are equally subject to the law. That imparts the element of non-discrimination in the concept of the Rule of Law.
What are the principles of the Rule of Law?
It was A.V. Dicey, the English Professor and Constitutional expert, who developed this concept. He defined 3 principles that govern the rule of law.
Supremacy of Law No man shall be punished or made to suffer in body or goods except for the violation of the law. Such a violation must be established in an ordinary court of the land and in an ordinary legal manner.
Equality before Law No man is above the law and everyone, whatever his condition or rank is, is subject to the ordinary laws of the land. <It means a person can sue or be sued in a court of law>
Predominance of Legal Spirit The result of the ordinary law of the land is Constitution. It indicates that the general principles of the constitution are the result of judicial decisions of the courts in England. <However, this principle does not apply in the case of a written constitution. It stands modified in India, where it reads that the constitution is the supreme law of the land & all other laws in order to be legally valid shall conform to the constitution>
What is the importance of Rule of Law?
Rule of Law is essential for the protection of human rights.
This concept changed the mode of administration from “King was Law” to “Law is King”. It is quite essential for the healthy functioning of democracy.
In its path-breaking judgment in Keshavanand Bharti’s case, our Supreme Court ruled that the Rule of Law is part of the Basic Structure of the Constitution.
The Constitution in order to preserve the rule of law, has conferred the writ jurisdiction under Art. 32 and Art. 226 on Supreme Court and High Court respectively.
How Rule of Law is different from Rule of Law?
It is important not to confuse Rule of Law with rule by law.
The existence of a law is necessary but that is not sufficient. The law must have a certain core component that guarantees the basic human rights and the human dignity of every person.
Rule by law can become an instrument of oppression and it can give legitimacy to the enactment of laws that may grossly violate basic human rights.
Let’s see with examples, how rule by law can be misused
Nazi Germany put Jews in concentration camps and thereafter sent them to the gas chambers. The justification offered was that there was a law that empowered such acts to be done. But that was rule by law, not the Rule of Law.
During the apartheid regime in South Africa, repressive and racially discriminatory laws against the black majority were sought to be justified on the basis of enacted laws.
Let’s see the relevance of the Rule of Law in India
In India, this concept is implicitly mentioned in the fundamental rights of our constitution. The equality before law (Article 14) includes Rule of Law in itself.
Indian Constitution grants some exceptions to the Rule of Law.
What are the exceptions to the Rule of Law in India?
The President/Governor is not answerable to court of law in discharge of his executive functions.
No criminal proceedings whatsoever can be instituted against the President or Governor of the state, while he is in office.
No civil proceedings in which relief is claimed can be filed against President or Governor except after the expiration of a 2-month notice that is served on him.
Under International laws, the visiting heads of state, heads of govt, ministers, officials, and foreign diplomats who are posted in the country are not subjected to the jurisdiction of local courts in the discharge of their official functions.
What are the concerns regarding the Rule of Law in India?
Legal experts have raised their concerns regarding the implementation of the Rule of Law in India. A free democratic society like India cannot have recourse to measures that violate the very essence of the rule of law.
For instance, a law that permits the killing of suspected terrorists or enables indefinite detention without prior hearing at the absolute discretion of the executive is destructive of the rule of law. Fake encounters have no place in a govt professedly based on the rule of law.
Therefore, we should strive to instill the rule of law temperament and culture at home and in educational institutions. The aim should be that rule of law becomes the secular religion of all nations based on tolerance and mutual respect.
