Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of symbols
- 1 The general nature of biosphere-atmosphere fluxes
- 2 Thermodynamics, work, and energy
- 3 Chemical reactions, enzyme catalysts, and stable isotopes
- 4 Control over metabolic fluxes
- 5 Modeling the metabolic CO2 flux
- 6 Diffusion and continuity
- 7 Boundary layer and stomatal control over leaf fluxes
- 8 Leaf structure and function
- 9 Water transport within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum
- 10 Leaf and canopy energy budgets
- 11 Canopy structure and radiative transfer
- 12 Vertical structure and mixing of the atmosphere
- 13 Wind and turbulence
- 14 Observations of turbulent fluxes
- 15 Modeling of fluxes at the canopy and landscape scales
- 16 Soil fluxes of CO2, CH4, and NOx
- 17 Fluxes of biogenic volatile compounds between plants and the atmosphere
- 18 Stable isotope variants as tracers for studying biosphere-atmosphere exchange
- References
- Index
- Plate Section
12 - Vertical structure and mixing of the atmosphere
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of symbols
- 1 The general nature of biosphere-atmosphere fluxes
- 2 Thermodynamics, work, and energy
- 3 Chemical reactions, enzyme catalysts, and stable isotopes
- 4 Control over metabolic fluxes
- 5 Modeling the metabolic CO2 flux
- 6 Diffusion and continuity
- 7 Boundary layer and stomatal control over leaf fluxes
- 8 Leaf structure and function
- 9 Water transport within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum
- 10 Leaf and canopy energy budgets
- 11 Canopy structure and radiative transfer
- 12 Vertical structure and mixing of the atmosphere
- 13 Wind and turbulence
- 14 Observations of turbulent fluxes
- 15 Modeling of fluxes at the canopy and landscape scales
- 16 Soil fluxes of CO2, CH4, and NOx
- 17 Fluxes of biogenic volatile compounds between plants and the atmosphere
- 18 Stable isotope variants as tracers for studying biosphere-atmosphere exchange
- References
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
A partir d’une hauter variable avec la situation atmospherique (de 8 km à 12 km) commence une zone caractérisée par lá très faible décroissance de température ou même par une croissance légère avec des alternatives de refroidissement et d’echauffement. Nous ne pouvans préciser l’épaisseur de cette zone; mais, d’après les observations actuelles, elle pataît atteindre au moins plusieurs kilometers.
[At some variable height in the atmosphere (between 8 km and 12 km) there begins a characteristic decay of the low temperature trend, or even a slight increase in temperature with alternating heating and cooling. We can specify the thickness of this zone and from the current observations it appears to be at least several kilometers.]
Leon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (1902)Prior to 1900 most meteorologists recognized that atmospheric temperature decreased with height and they assumed that this decrease was continuous. Late in the nineteenth century, however, the French meteorologist Leon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort used hydrogen balloons with precisely calibrated thermometers to demonstrate that while temperature did indeed decrease with height to approximately 8–12 km, above that height the temperature remained constant, or even increased slightly. Teisserenc de Bort referred to the atmosphere above 8–12 km as the “isothermal zone.” Later, studies by the German meteorologist Richard Assmann confirmed the observations of Teisserenc de Bort, and even extended them to note that the so-called “isothermal zone” was actually a zone with consistent temperature increase as a function of height. This condition of warmer air above cooler air is now referred to as an “inversion,” thus distinguishing it from the more commonly observed pattern of decreased temperature with height. In later writings, during the early twentieth century, Teisserenc de Bort postulated the existence of two atmospheric layers separated by the inversion – the troposphere, literally translated from the Greek word “tropein,” which means to turnover, and the stratosphere, literally translated from the Latin word “stratificationem,” which means to form into layers. Since his writings on this subject, the temperature inversion observed by Teisserenc de Bort has become known as the tropopause, the region separating the troposphere from the stratosphere. The discoveries of Teisserenc de Bort were not only important for our understanding of the physical arrangement of the atmosphere, but by focusing on atmospheric turnover in the troposphere, they laid the foundation for our current understanding of surface-atmosphere transport and even more general aspects of atmospheric physics.
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- Terrestrial Biosphere-Atmosphere Fluxes , pp. 280 - 295Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014