Year 5 MPhys Physics student Grace Carling reflects on the Atmospheric Physics course she is taking, and why she now things clouds are cool!
On a recent flight to Southampton, I was struck by how studying physics can completely flip your perspective. This semester as an elective I’m taking Atmospheric Physics – I’m not a geophysicist or a meteorologist, but the great thing about studying physics at Edinburgh is they’ll let you try just about anything! Due to some less than perfect planning, this Friday after my Atmospheric Physics lecture, I rushed straight across town to catch my flight down south, making it with minutes to spare (student life is nothing if not hectic!).
In our Friday afternoon lecture, we had been discussing the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). The ABL is the sharp boundary layer close to the earth’s surface where the atmosphere is influenced by turbulence. This turbulent layer is caused by three main factors: shear forces like wind, static forces like thermal convection, and turbulence itself (one big disturbance will lead to lots of smaller disturbances as the energy dissipates). The ABL is important to us because we live in it! The atmosphere and the elements as we experience them almost entirely exist within the ABL. Most major weather forecasts are ABL forecasts, and pollution which effects our quality of air is trapped within. If you’ve ever experienced fog or witnessed a cloud inversion, these are ABL phenomena. Above the ABL is the free atmosphere, and often it’s not hard to spot the separation between the two, if you know what to look for.
As the plane ascended, and I turned to look out if the window, I saw it! As we broke through the layer of clouds I saw we were now flying directly above the Atmospheric Boundary Layer, complete with ‘fair weather clouds’ floating at the boundary, just like we’d discussed a few hours before in lecture theatre 201. It struck me how awesome this relatively unassuming phenomenon I’d read about in textbooks actually is. I’m aware getting excited about clouds isn’t exactly cool, yet see for yourself – clouds are pretty cool if you ask me!
