Which atmospheric condition involves an increase in temperature with height, contrary to the normal decrease?

Which atmospheric condition involves an increase in temperature with height, contrary to the normal decrease?

• A. Greenhouse effect
• B. Adiabatic lapse
• C. Temperature inversion
• D. Lapse rate

Answer: (C)

Temperature inversion is when a layer of the atmosphere gets warmer as you go higher, instead of cooler. Normally the air gets colder with height because the ground cools at night and the air above expands and cools, so the typical lapse rate is a decrease in temperature upward. In an inversion, some process causes a stratum of warmer air to sit above cooler air, so the temperature increases with height within that layer. This often happens after clear, calm nights when the surface chills and a layer of stable air forms near the ground, trapping pollutants and suppressing vertical mixing. The other ideas describe different concepts: the greenhouse effect is about gases trapping heat globally, the adiabatic lapse rate is about temperature change inside rising or sinking air parcels, and the lapse rate is the general tendency for temperature to fall with height. Thus, the condition where temperature rises with height is a temperature inversion.

Temperature inversion is when a layer of the atmosphere gets warmer as you go higher, instead of cooler. Normally the air gets colder with height because the ground cools at night and the air above expands and cools, so the typical lapse rate is a decrease in temperature upward. In an inversion, some process causes a stratum of warmer air to sit above cooler air, so the temperature increases with height within that layer. This often happens after clear, calm nights when the surface chills and a layer of stable air forms near the ground, trapping pollutants and suppressing vertical mixing. The other ideas describe different concepts: the greenhouse effect is about gases trapping heat globally, the adiabatic lapse rate is about temperature change inside rising or sinking air parcels, and the lapse rate is the general tendency for temperature to fall with height. Thus, the condition where temperature rises with height is a temperature inversion.