A
Skew-T Log-P diagram is one of four
thermodynamic diagramsThermodynamic diagrams are diagrams used by scientists and engineers to represent the thermodynamic states of a material and the consequences of manipulating this material...
commonly used in
weatherWeather is a set of all the phenomena occurring in a given atmosphere at a given time. Weather phenomena lie in the troposphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate is the term for the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods...
analysis and forecasting. In 1947, N. Herlofson proposed a modification to the
emagramAn emagram is one of four thermodynamic diagrams used to display temperature lapse rate and moisture content profiles in the atmosphere. The emagram has axes of temperature and pressure...
which allows straight, horizontal isobars, and provides for a large angle between isotherms and dry adiabats, similar to that in the
tephigramA tephigram is one of four thermodynamic diagrams commonly used in weather analysis and forecasting. The name evolved from the original name "T--gram" to describe the axes of temperature and entropy used to create the plot...
. It was thus more suitable for some of the newer analysis techniques being invented by the
United States Air ForceThe United States Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the U.S. armed forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on 18 September 1947 under the National Security Act of 1947 - 80 P.L....
.
The major use for skew-T log-P diagrams is the plotting of
radiosonde soundingsAn atmospheric sounding is a measurement of vertical distribution of physical properties of the atmospheric column such as pressure, temperature, wind speed and wind direction , liquid water content, ozone concentration, pollution, and other properties...
, which give a vertical profile of the
temperatureIn physics, temperature is a physical property of a system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold; something that feels hotter generally has the higher temperature. Temperature is one of the principal parameters of thermodynamics...
and
dew pointThe dew point is the temperature to which a given parcel of air must be cooled, at constant barometric pressure, for water vapor to condense into water. The condensed water is called dew. The dew point is a saturation point...
through the atmosphere above a certain point on the ground.
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A
Skew-T Log-P diagram is one of four
thermodynamic diagramsThermodynamic diagrams are diagrams used by scientists and engineers to represent the thermodynamic states of a material and the consequences of manipulating this material...
commonly used in
weatherWeather is a set of all the phenomena occurring in a given atmosphere at a given time. Weather phenomena lie in the troposphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate is the term for the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods...
analysis and forecasting. In 1947, N. Herlofson proposed a modification to the
emagramAn emagram is one of four thermodynamic diagrams used to display temperature lapse rate and moisture content profiles in the atmosphere. The emagram has axes of temperature and pressure...
which allows straight, horizontal isobars, and provides for a large angle between isotherms and dry adiabats, similar to that in the
tephigramA tephigram is one of four thermodynamic diagrams commonly used in weather analysis and forecasting. The name evolved from the original name "T--gram" to describe the axes of temperature and entropy used to create the plot...
. It was thus more suitable for some of the newer analysis techniques being invented by the
United States Air ForceThe United States Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the U.S. armed forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on 18 September 1947 under the National Security Act of 1947 - 80 P.L....
.
The major use for skew-T log-P diagrams is the plotting of
radiosonde soundingsAn atmospheric sounding is a measurement of vertical distribution of physical properties of the atmospheric column such as pressure, temperature, wind speed and wind direction , liquid water content, ozone concentration, pollution, and other properties...
, which give a vertical profile of the
temperatureIn physics, temperature is a physical property of a system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold; something that feels hotter generally has the higher temperature. Temperature is one of the principal parameters of thermodynamics...
and
dew pointThe dew point is the temperature to which a given parcel of air must be cooled, at constant barometric pressure, for water vapor to condense into water. The condensed water is called dew. The dew point is a saturation point...
through the atmosphere above a certain point on the ground. The isopleths on the diagram can then be used to simplify many tedious calculations involved, which were previously performed by hand or not at all.
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