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The strong heat flux through the Earth's atmosphere, the presence of greenhouse gases, convection, and mixing conspire to push the troposphere away from thermodynamic equilibrium (isothermal atmosphere) and toward an adiabatic atmosphere. The natural drop in density with altitude means an adiabatic atmosphere is subject to a lapse rate, a nearly linear drop ...

7

To start with a definition, the tropopause is the boundary between troposphere and stratosphere; within the troposphere temperature decreases with increase in altitude (the temperature profile is dominated by radiative heat from the Earth's surface), whereas in the stratosphere temperature increases with altitude (the temperature profile is dominated by ...

7

The direction of the vertical shear plays a large role in cyclogenesis, where easterly shear tends to enhance the formation of cylones and westerly shear tends to suppress it (Tuleya and Kurihara, 1981). Internal waves are responsible for large transfers of energy across vast distances. Therefore, they play important roles in a wide array of atmospherical (...

5

Here are two parts of an answer, but this is by no means complete. Most monsoonal research is focused on explaining the monsoonal passage through the plains of the Indian subcontinent. Very few papers can be found on how the same troughs cause rainfall at 3000 meters. I would like an authoritative reference on Monsoonal Mountain Meteorlogy. All that is ...

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I am not not an expert in meteorology, but do study the chemistry involved in these types of events. My understanding is that the folds in the tropopause generally occur below the front of the jet stream, when the potential vorticity is strong enough to transport stratospheric air down through the tropopause/inversion. Please see the relevant quote from Q....

4

You may be forgetting that pressure also decreases with height (exponentially). Also, because $P=\rho R T$, $\frac{dP}{dT}=\rho R$ (that is, $c_p$ does not appear). But I digress in answering your question. Let's break down why potential temperature increases with height. Let's start with the equation: \theta=T\left(\frac{P_0}{P}\right)^{\frac{R_d}{c_p}}\...

4

If we'd be living in a dry atmosphere your reasoning is indeed correct. Air would rise adiabatically and air would loose about 9.8 °C/km (dry adiabatic lapse rate). This means constant potential temperature. However, Earths atmosphere isn't dry. As soon as a rising, moist air parcel reaches saturation, it will rise with a moist adiabatic lapse rate (6-7 °C/...

4

Firstly, the RSS and UAH datasets do not "line up nearly perfectly", the diagram below shows both products over the last 20 years (which appears to be what this question is actually about) here is the url used to generate it. As you can see, they disagree quite considerable on the value of the trend. UAH and RSS are different methods used to infer ...

4

Being remote sensing, algorithms for inverting the raw data to get physical quantities may be improving with time. Perhaps a slight adjustment in algorithm or calibration happened between July and Sept of this year. However you would expect this to introduce a systematic adjustment, not a scatter. One might reasonably wonder why the data is steady before ...

3

Truth be told, there is no such place. The atmosphere is a fluid, and a fluid moves. If a fluid did not move, it would not be a fluid. Proof of concept- If you exhale, the carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other materials that form your breath would need to move, otherwise you would asphyxiate. That movement can be classified as wind, therefore wind exists. ...

2

Great question! First, let's look at typical data: here are the 1981-2010 Reanalysis mean and standard deviation: So looks like the mean 500 height in September for Wisconsin ranges from about 571-580 Dm, with a standard deviation of 36-42 Dm. These are mean pressures, not lows or highs, so already, not that far off your low. If (a big if) meteorological ...

1

Short answer: I think the difference in the 2 soundings can be mostly explained by moving from one air mass (low pressure, relatively humid) to another (high pressure, relatively dry) which also increases the tropopause height. One thing you have to realize is that radiosoundings never provide a perfect vertical profile moving straight into the atmosphere ...

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Not just the south pole, but 'Ridge A' and many other parts of the high Antarctic Plateau, at or about 4000 metres altitude, are generally recognized as being the least windy. Otherwise, there are a many parts of the high pressure belts at about +/- 30 degrees which have little wind for most of the year. These tend to be very dry deserts where occasional ...

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