"James Brown" wrote in message
...
Does anyone know if there is a standard colour representation for
cloud
top charts/images up to 16.8kms.


.... I see no-one has replied; possibly because, like me, we're not sure
what you mean ;-)

If you mean is there a standard for colour-slicing of Infra Red (or
indeed any imagery) on workstations, then AFAIK, there isn't. All the
systems I have worked on in the past let you define your own set-up for
colours, depending upon the temperature of the cloud tops. Indeed, many
let you store your own default set-up. I used to find it useful to have
a particular scheme just for cold tops (roughly colder than -30degC), so
that anything colder was a shade of blue or green, with all other set to
grey-scale. You could then tell instantly whether areas of cold topped
cloud were growing (developmental) or decreasing (weakening). Another
useful dodge for night-time was to try and 'tune' the colours of SC/ST
against the land surface - didn't always work of course, but even a
slight difference, when run on a rapid looping cycle, could help decided
where a Sc edge was going. There are many variations on this theme.

Some standard visualisation packages may offer 'default' schemes, but
even these can often be tinkered with.

In monochrome, then of course it has usually been 'standard' for
low-level / warm-topped clouds (e.g. St, Sc) to be dark grey to
near-black, whilst higher-level / cold-topped clouds (e.g. Ci, Cs) to be
white, with very cold (e.g. deep/vigorous Cb tops) the whitest of all.
But even this is not set in stone: it's just how things were done when
APT was first provided as an operational tool back in the 1960's.

HTH

Martin.

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