GEOG 2050 Lecture : 6 14 Notes
Document Summary
Water vapor in this particle can condense causes condensation: neutral conditions: if air is forced to rise, it will maintain its position once the lifting force is removed. If rise or descent is fast enough, there is no exchange of heat (energy) between air parcel and surrounding environment: adiabatic heating / cooling. Condensation releases latent heat: mar varies with es (which depends on temperature) from approximately 3. 5*c/km in tropics to about 6*c/km at 0*c, the lapse rate for the air around adiabatically-moving parcels. Depending on whether or not the parcel is saturated, those parcels can be cooling/warming faster than the rest of the air. This leads to different stabilities at different heights. Conditional instability: a saturated air parcel conditional instability or not, atmosphere will be stable absolute stability unstable absolute instability. If elr < mar, then you know it is < dar, because mar is always < dar. If elr > dar, then it must be > mar too.
