Exam 6: Stability and Cloud Development

Cumulonimbus clouds indicate unstable atmospheric conditions. What stops the upward growth and causes the top of a cumulonimbus cloud to flatten out into an anvil?

The atmosphere is normally most stable in the early morning and most unstable in the afternoon.

Most thunderstorms do not extend very far into the stratosphere because the air in the stratosphere is ____.

The rate at which the temperature changes inside a rising (or descending)parcel of SATURATED air is called the ____ rate.

In a conditionally unstable atmosphere, the environmental lapse rate will be ____ the moist adiabatic rate and ____ the dry adiabatic rate.

Rain shadows form on the ____________________ side of mountains.

Why are moist and dry adiabatic rates of cooling different?

Conditional instability depends on the condition of ____.

When the environmental lapse rate is between the moist adiabatic rate and the dry adiabatic rate is a situation known as ____.

The difference between "moist" and "dry" adiabatic rates is a result of the fact that _______.

Explain the role of convection in cloud formation.

The safest place to build an airport in a mountainous region is along a deep valley.

The dry adiabatic rate is ____ greater than the moist adiabatic rate.

Warm saturated air produces more liquid water than cold saturated air.

Which process will change a moist layer of stable air into a deck of low stratocumulus clouds?

An air parcel in an unstable atmosphere has ____ force acting on it.

A conditionally unstable atmosphere is ____________________ with respect to unsaturated air and ____________________ with respect to saturated air.

Subsidence inversions are just as common on Earth's surface as they are aloft.

What effects might a subsidence inversion have on weather conditions at the ground?

If the atmosphere is conditionally unstable, the condition necessary to bring on instability is called ____________________.