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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.
Convective Instability, denoted in the red highlighted region ("positive area"), on a Skew-T log-P diagram. 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.
First, the model assumes the atmosphere is composed of fluid obeying quasi-geostrophic motion. Second, the model assumes a constant Coriolis parameter. The model also assumes a constant static stability parameter and that fluctuations in the density of the air are small (obeys the Boussinesq approximation).
As the instability grows, the center of mass of the fluid is lowered. In growing waves in the atmosphere, cold air moving downwards and equatorwards displaces the warmer air moving polewards and upwards. [citation needed] Baroclinic instability can be investigated in the laboratory using a rotating, fluid filled annulus. The annulus is heated ...
A good example of convective instability can be found in our own atmosphere. If dry mid-level air is drawn over very warm, moist air in the lower troposphere, a hydrolapse (an area of rapidly decreasing dew point temperatures with height) results in the region where the moist boundary layer and mid-level air meet. As daytime heating increases ...
the atmosphere is unstable to vertical motions, and convection is likely. Situations in which the equivalent potential temperature decreases with height, indicating instability in saturated air, are quite common.
That instability is expected to increase as the world warms. Prosser’s colleagues at the University of Reading separately used climate models to project how clear-air turbulence in the latter ...
Atmospheric instability; Atmospheric stratification, the dividing of the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere into stably-stratified layers; Atmospheric circulation, caused by the unstable stratification of the atmosphere; Thermohaline circulation, circulation in the oceans despite stable stratification.