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Melendrez - Jhoana - Laboratory 2

The document describes a laboratory exercise involving modifying MATLAB scripts to visualize and compute pressure, potential temperature, and other atmospheric variables as functions of height using hydrostatic equations and thermodynamic relationships. Students are asked to modify existing scripts to plot these variables and show that atmospheric pressure decreases with height while potential temperature increases with height. They are also tasked with using data from a file to plot temperature profiles versus pressure and height and compute potential temperature.

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JHOANA MELENDREZ
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224 views3 pages

Melendrez - Jhoana - Laboratory 2

The document describes a laboratory exercise involving modifying MATLAB scripts to visualize and compute pressure, potential temperature, and other atmospheric variables as functions of height using hydrostatic equations and thermodynamic relationships. Students are asked to modify existing scripts to plot these variables and show that atmospheric pressure decreases with height while potential temperature increases with height. They are also tasked with using data from a file to plot temperature profiles versus pressure and height and compute potential temperature.

Uploaded by

JHOANA MELENDREZ
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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NAME: Jhoana A.

Melendrez DATE:10/15/2021
YEAR AND SECTION: BSMET 3-1

LABORATORY EXERCISE 2
BASIC CONSERVATION LAW

Introduction:
The pressure of the atmosphere differs depending on altitude. The hydrostatic equation explains
the change of pressure at a height due to the change of air mass above that height. This
equation tells us how quickly air pressure drops with altitude. On the other hand, The potential
temperature of an air parcel is defined as the temperature that the parcel of air would have if it
were expanded or compressed adiabatically from its existing pressure and temperature to
standard pressure.
This laboratory activity will help the students visualize pressure and potential temperature
processes using modified MATLAB scripts.

Questions:
1. The MATLAB script standard_T_p.m defines and plots the temperature and the lapse
rate associated with the U.S. Standard Atmosphere as functions of height.
a) Modify this script to compute the pressure and potential temperature and plot
these in the same format used for temperature and lapse rate. Hint: to compute
pressure, integrate the hydrostatic equation from the surface upward in
increments of δz .
b) Show that if we define a mean scale height for the layer between z and z +δz by
−δz
letting H=R [ T ( z ) +T ( z +δz ) ] /(2 g), then p ( z+ δz )= p ( z ) exp exp [ ]
H
. (Note that

as you move upward layer by layer you must use the local height-dependent
value of H in this formula.)
- Therefore, atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing height. On the
other hand, potential temperature increases with height.
2. The MATLAB script thermo_profile.m is a simple script to read in data giving pressure
and temperature for a tropical mean sounding.
a) Run this script to plot temperature versus pressure for data in the file
tropical_temp.dat.
b) Use the hypsometric equation to compute the geopotential height corresponding
to each pressure level of the data file.
c) Compute the corresponding potential temperature and plot graphs of the
temperature and potential temperature variations with pressure and with
geopotential height

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