It is shown here that a wide, buoyant parcel of air at the surface accelerates far less rapidly than it does aloft. In particular, analytical formulae are derived for the effective buoyancy (i.e. the net vertical acceleration due to parcel buoyancy and environmental response) of idealized cylinders of diameterDand heightH, located in free space and at the surface. These formulae quantify the decrease of effective buoyancy with increasing aspect ratioD/H, and show that this effect is more pronounced for surface cylinders, especially whenD/H> 1. We gain intuition for these results by considering the pressure fields generated by these buoyant parcels, and we test our results with large‐eddy simulations. Our formulae can inform parametrizations of the vertical velocity equation for clouds, and also provide a quantitative map of the ‘grey zone’ in numerical modelling between hydrostatic and non‐hydrostatic regimes.