Talk:Convective condensation level

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Bad formula

Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The text currently says

Can be roughly approximated by taking the spread between the surface temperature and dewpoint and dividing by 4.4 (if temperatures are in °F) or 2.5 (if temperatures are in °C), then multiplying the result by 1000.

As far as I can tell, this is complete nonsense. There is no formula, can never be a formula, to determine the convective condensation level because it is determined by plotting 100%RH verses altitude and locating the intersection with the actual measured temperature sounding.

If it is assumed (and this is a big assumption) that the lapse rate is 6.5 K/km (the ELR), then the CCL can be found by

T_d - 1.8 z = T - 6.5 z

z(6.5 - 1.8) = T - T_d

z = (T - T_d)/4.7

Which is quite close to the original (August 2011) formula which divided by 4.4 for degrees Celsius.

The April 2014 edit claims

'Correction to cloud-base calculation copied from Lifting condensation level article'

However, since I am not able to find anything like that in the referenced page, and because the values are absolute nonsense, I think that edit should be considered to be vandalism. Robert - Northern VA (talk) 07:21, 14 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

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