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Vanishing potential temperature gradients in strong convection
Author(s) -
Webb E. K.
Publication year - 1958
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49708436004
Subject(s) - convection , temperature gradient , richardson number , potential temperature , feature (linguistics) , deep convection , atmospheric sciences , atmospheric convection , meteorology , mechanics , geology , climatology , physics , buoyancy , linguistics , philosophy
Temperature profiles recorded up to 30 m show an unexpected feature in conditions of free convection with light wind. Above the strong lapse near the ground, there is a transition to zero potential temperature gradient. The height of the transition level falls as the wind strength decreases, becoming less than 8 m when the negative Richardson number at 1·5 m is greater than 0·4. From reported observations over the sea it seems that the feature is present there also.