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TEMPERATURE INVERSIONS

Archived Nerdy Forum (Weather Q&A).
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crikey
Supercell
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Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 8:02 pm
Location: tweed shire NSW and nDUNOLLY.. Nth Central district VIC
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TEMPERATURE INVERSIONS

Post by crikey »

Today the SES did a burn off just north of where l live in Dunolly.
During the day you could see the the billows of smoke rising and a N/east wind blew the smoke over us.
At sunset the wind was calm and a very good example of a temperature inversion formed on our horizon Picture below .
Image
The smoke layer at the surface being held in place by warmer air aloft. The lack of wind preventing mixing of the cooler layer ( smoke layer) and the air above the smoke which would be warmer.
Hence a temperature inversion.
Generally the air gets colder with increasing altitude but an temperature inversion is an exception
And to 'boot' we are likely to get a mild frost tonight
Inversions tend to occur especially toward the central zone of a well defined closed high pressure system like the one over us today . The central pressure is 1033Hectapascals today and that is a strong High pressure cell yielding some strong inversion
Image

The Bureau of Meteorology ( BOM )have a good summary of how a temperature inversions are formed, at the link here
http://www.bom.gov.au/info/ftweather/page_16.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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