In meteorology, the equilibrium level (EL), or level of neutral buoyancy (LNB), or limit of convection (LOC), is the height at which a rising parcel of air is at the same temperature as its environment. This means that unstable air is now stable when it reaches the equilibrium level and convection stops. This level is often near the tropopause and can be indicated as near where the anvil of a thunderstorm because it is where the thunderstorm updraft is finally cut off, except in the case of overshooting tops where it continues rising to the maximum parcel level (MPL) due to momentum. More precisely, the cumulonimbus will stop rising around a few kilometres prior to reaching the level of neutral buoyancy and on average anvil glaciation occurs at a higher altitude over land than over sea (despite little difference in LNB from land to sea).

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Related publications (3)

Laterally unconfined neutral or negative buoyancy inflow into a quiescent ambient over sloping bottom

Haoran Shi

This work studies the nearshore hydrodynamics of a shallow turbulent flow entering a laterally unconfined quiescent ambient with a sloping bottom boundary. Examples of such flow are neutrally buoyant ebb tidal jets and hyperpycnal river plumes entering ope ...
EPFL2023

A moored profiling platform to study turbulent mixing in density currents in a large lake

David Andrew Barry, Ulrich Lemmin, François Mettra, Rafael Sebastian Reiss, Valentin Kindschi, Benjamin Daniel Graf

During calm cooling periods, differential cooling can induce winter cascading which is an important process for littoral-pelagic exchange and deep water renewal in large, deep lakes (Fer et al., 2001; Peeters et al., 2003). Generated in the shallow near-sh ...
2023

Investigating the contribution of secondary ice production to in-cloud ice crystal numbers

Athanasios Nenes

In-cloud measurements of ice crystal number concentration can be orders of magnitude higher than the precloud ice nucleating particle number concentration. This disparity may be explained with secondary ice production processes. Several such processes have ...
Blackwell Publishing Ltd2017
Related concepts (2)
Convective available potential energy
In meteorology, convective available potential energy (commonly abbreviated as CAPE), is the integrated amount of work that the upward (positive) buoyancy force would perform on a given mass of air (called an air parcel) if it rose vertically through the entire atmosphere. Positive CAPE will cause the air parcel to rise, while negative CAPE will cause the air parcel to sink. Nonzero CAPE is an indicator of atmospheric instability in any given atmospheric sounding, a necessary condition for the development of cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds with attendant severe weather hazards.
Thunderstorm
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are sometimes called thundershowers. Thunderstorms occur in a type of cloud known as a cumulonimbus. They are usually accompanied by strong winds and often produce heavy rain and sometimes snow, sleet, or hail, but some thunderstorms produce little precipitation or no precipitation at all.

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