Technical Reference

Abstract

Downdrafts are known to play an important role in the dynamics of the Earth’s atmosphere and climate, but current quantitative understanding of the mechanisms that generate, maintain and inhibit them is lacking. A simple original model, based on the parcel theory that considers only buoyant forces, is devised to investigate the factors that determine the speed with which a negatively buoyant air mass descends, and the distance it is able to penetrate in the atmosphere.

Contents

• Introduction and theory
• Literature review
• Methods
• An alternative method
• References