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In meteorology, convective instability or stability of an air mass refers to its ability to resist vertical motion. A stable atmosphere makes vertical movement difficult, and small vertical disturbances dampen out and disappear.
A baroclinic instability is a fluid dynamical instability of fundamental importance in the atmosphere and ocean. It can lead to the formation of transient mesoscale eddies, with a horizontal scale of 10-100 km. [1] [2] In contrast, flows on the largest scale in the ocean are described as ocean currents, the largest scale eddies are mostly created by shearing of two ocean currents and static ...
Atmospheric thermodynamics is the study of heat-to-work transformations (and their reverse) that take place in the Earth's atmosphere and manifest as weather or climate. . Atmospheric thermodynamics use the laws of classical thermodynamics, to describe and explain such phenomena as the properties of moist air, the formation of clouds, atmospheric convection, boundary layer meteorology, and ...
Under certain conditions, the lapse rate can increase significantly in a short amount of time, resulting in convection. High convective instability can lead to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes as moist air which is trapped in the boundary layer eventually becomes highly negatively buoyant relative to the adiabatic lapse rate and escapes as a ...
In engineering applications, stable stratification or convection may or may not be desirable. In either case it may be deliberately manipulated. Stratification can strongly affect the mixing of fluids, [5] which is important in many manufacturing processes. Underfloor heating deliberately creates unstable stratification of the air in a room.
At a critical Rayleigh number of 1708, [5] instability sets in and convection cells appear. The critical Rayleigh number can be obtained analytically for a number of different boundary conditions by doing a perturbation analysis on the linearized equations in the stable state. [ 16 ]
Atmospheric convection is the result of a parcel-environment instability (temperature difference layer) in the atmosphere. [ jargon ] Different lapse rates within dry and moist air masses lead to instability.
Atmospheric instability is a condition where the Earth's atmosphere is considered to be unstable and as a result local weather is highly variable through distance and time. [ clarification needed ] [ 1 ] Atmospheric instability encourages vertical motion, which is directly correlated to different types of weather systems and their severity.