GEOG 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Fluid Parcel, Ice Pellets, Weather Front
Document Summary
To determine stability, we need to know: Temperature of the air parcel at various levels. Temperature of the surrounding air at various levels. Stable air sinking suppresses vertical cloud growth. Stable air resists upward motion and spreads-out horizontally. A stable atmosphere resists upward air motion. The atmosphere becomes more stable when the air aloft warms or the surface air cools. More stable less of a difference between surface temp. Air may become more stable by: radiation cooling at night, an influx of cooler surface air by the wind, moving over a cold surface. The atmosphere is typically most stable in the early morning near sunrise. They commonly occur on clear, calm nights when long wave radiation loss is maximized. At night, air near the surface cools more rapidly than air aloft. Radiation fog is a common indicator of a radiation inversion. They form along weather fronts (at boundaries of an air mass) At warm fronts, warm air overlays cold.
