See this picture from the book Hartmann, Dennis L - Global Physical Climatology.
There is a minimum temperature point of 200K at 15km height above the equator, in June/July/August.
I don't know why this happens. Can anyone explain this?
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Sign up to join this communitySee this picture from the book Hartmann, Dennis L - Global Physical Climatology.
There is a minimum temperature point of 200K at 15km height above the equator, in June/July/August.
I don't know why this happens. Can anyone explain this?
That's because the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, is highest in equatorial regions. The high amount energy from the Sun in equatorial regions makes for a lot of convection, which in turn pushes the tropopause to about 16 km above the surface (and sometimes to 18 km) in those equatorial regions. Near the poles, sinking air and reduced solar intensity makes the tropopause much closer to the surface, where it is only 8 km or so high.
The lapse rate in the upper troposphere is roughly the same as the dry adiabatic lapse rate, 9.8 °C/km. The 8 km difference between the tropopause height between equatorial and polar regions results in about 80 degrees more cooling in equatorial regions than polar ones.