1.
Scotland
–
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
2.
Smog
–
Smog is a type of air pollutant. The word smog was coined in the early 20th century as a portmanteau of the smoke and fog to refer to smoky fog, its opacity. The word was then intended to refer to what was known as pea soup fog. This kind of air pollution is composed of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, ozone. Human-made smog is derived from coal emissions, vehicular emissions, industrial emissions, forest and agricultural fires, in certain other cities, such as Delhi, smog severity is often aggravated by stubble burning in neighboring agricultural areas. The atmospheric pollution levels of Los Angeles, Beijing, Delhi, Mexico City, Tehran and it is usually highly toxic to humans and can cause severe sickness, shortened life or death. Coinage of the smog is generally attributed to Dr. Henry Antoine Des Voeux in his 1905 paper, Fog. The following day the newspaper stated that Dr. Des Voeux did a service in coining a new word for the London fog. However, this is predated by a Los Angeles Times article of January 19,1893, coal fires, used to heat individual buildings or in a power-producing plant, can emit significant clouds of smoke that contributes to smog. Air pollution from this source has reported in England since the Middle Ages. London, in particular, was notorious up through the century for its coal-caused smogs. Traffic emissions – such as trucks, buses, and automobiles – also contribute. Airborne by-products from vehicle exhaust systems cause air pollution and are an ingredient in the creation of smog in some large cities. The major culprits from transportation sources are carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile compounds, sulfur dioxide. These molecules react with sunlight, heat, ammonia, moisture, and other compounds to form the noxious vapors, ground level ozone, Photochemical smog is the chemical reaction of sunlight, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, which leaves airborne particles and ground-level ozone. A secondary pollutant is not directly emitted as such, but forms when other pollutants react in the atmosphere, all of these harsh chemicals are usually highly reactive and oxidizing. Photochemical smog is therefore considered to be a problem of modern industrialization and it is present in all modern cities, but it is more common in cities with sunny, warm, dry climates and a large number of motor vehicles. Because it travels with the wind, it can affect sparsely populated areas as well, the composition and chemical reactions involved in photochemical smog were not understood until the 1950s
3.
Thunderstorm
–
Thunderstorms occur in association with a type of cloud known as a cumulonimbus. They are usually accompanied by winds, heavy rain, and sometimes snow, sleet, hail, or, in contrast. Thunderstorms may line up in a series or become a rainband, strong or severe thunderstorms, known as supercells, rotate as do cyclones. Thunderstorms result from the upward movement of warm, moist air. As the warm, moist air moves upward, it cools, condenses, as the rising air reaches its dew point temperature, water vapor condenses into water droplets or ice, reducing pressure locally within the thunderstorm cell. Any precipitation falls the long distance through the clouds towards the Earths surface, as the droplets fall, they collide with other droplets and become larger. Thunderstorms can form and develop in any location but most frequently within the mid-latitude. Thunderstorms are responsible for the development and formation of many weather phenomena. Thunderstorms, and the phenomena that occur along them, pose great hazards. Damage that results from thunderstorms is mainly inflicted by downburst winds, large hailstones, stronger thunderstorm cells are capable of producing tornadoes and waterspouts. There are four types of thunderstorms, single-cell, multi-cell cluster, multi-cell lines, supercell thunderstorms are the strongest and the most associated with severe weather phenomena. Mesoscale convective systems formed by vertical wind shear within the tropics and subtropics can be responsible for the development of hurricanes. Dry thunderstorms, with no precipitation, can cause the outbreak of wildfires from the heat generated from the lightning that accompanies them. Several means are used to study thunderstorms, weather radar, weather stations, past civilizations held various myths concerning thunderstorms and their development as late as the 18th century. Beyond the Earths atmosphere, thunderstorms have also observed on the planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune. Warm air has a lower density than air, so warmer air rises upwards. Clouds form as relatively warmer air, carrying moisture, rises within cooler air, the moist air rises, and, as it does so, it cools and some of the water vapor in that rising air condenses. If enough instability is present in the atmosphere, this process will continue long enough for cumulonimbus clouds to form and produce lightning, Meteorological indices such as convective available potential energy and the lifted index can be used to assist in determining potential upward vertical development of clouds
4.
Freezing rain
–
Freezing rain is the name given to rain that falls when surface temperatures are below freezing. Unlike sleet, a mixture of rain and snow, ice pellets, or hail, the resulting ice, called glaze, can accumulate to a thickness of several centimeters and cover all exposed surfaces. The METAR code for freezing rain is FZRA, a storm that produces a significant thickness of glaze ice from freezing rain is often referred to as an ice storm. Downed power lines cause power outages in affected areas while accumulated ice can pose significant overhead hazards. It is also known for being dangerous to aircraft since the ice can effectively remould the shape of the airfoil. Freezing rain is associated with the approach of a warm front. This setup is known as cold-air damming, and is characterized by very cold, the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico is often the fuel for freezing precipitation. Freezing rain develops when falling snow encounters a layer of air aloft, typically around the 800 mbar level, causing the snow to melt. As the rain continues to fall, it passes through a layer of subfreezing air just above the surface, if this layer of subfreezing air is sufficiently deep, the raindrops may have time to freeze into ice pellets before reaching the ground. However, if the layer of air at the surface is very shallow. Surface observations by manned or automatic stations are the only confirmation of freezing rain. One can never see directly freezing rain, rain or snow on weather radars, however, it is possible to estimate the area covered by freezing rain with radars indirectly. The intensity of the radar echoes is proportional to the form of the precipitation, in fact, rain has much stronger reflective power than snow but its diameter is much smaller. So the reflectivity of rain coming from melted snow is only slightly higher, however, in the layer where the snow is melting, the wet flakes still have a large diameter and are coated with water so the returns to the radar is much stronger. The presence of this indicates that there is a warm layer above ground where snow melts. This could be producing rain on the ground or the possibility of freezing rain if the temperature is below freezing and this artifact can be located, like on the image at left, with a cross-section through radar data. The height and slope of the brightband will give clues to the extent of the region where melting occurs, Freezing rain often causes major power outages by forming glaze ice. When the freezing rain or drizzle is light and not prolonged and it usually causes only minor damage, relieving trees of their dead branches etc
5.
Troposphere
–
The troposphere is the lowest portion of Earths atmosphere, and is also where nearly all weather takes place. It contains approximately 75% of the mass and 99% of the total mass of water vapor. The average depths of the troposphere are 20 km in the tropics,17 km in the mid latitudes, the lowest part of the troposphere, where friction with the Earths surface influences air flow, is the planetary boundary layer. This layer is typically a few hundred meters to 2 km deep depending on the landform, atop the troposphere is the tropopause, which is the border between the troposphere and stratosphere. The tropopause is a layer, where the air temperature ceases to decrease with height. Most of the phenomena we associate with day-to-day weather occur in the troposphere, by volume, dry air contains 78. 09% nitrogen,20. 95% oxygen,0. 93% argon,0. 04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains an amount of water vapor. The chemical composition of the troposphere is essentially uniform, with the exception of water vapor. The source of vapor is at the surface through the processes of evaporation. Thus the proportion of water vapor is normally greatest near the surface, the pressure of the atmosphere is maximum at sea level and decreases with altitude. This is because the atmosphere is nearly in hydrostatic equilibrium. The temperature of the troposphere generally decreases as altitude increases, the rate at which the temperature decreases, − d T / d z, is called the environmental lapse rate. The ELR is nothing more than the difference in temperature between the surface and the tropopause divided by the height. The reason for this difference is that the ground absorbs most of the suns energy. Meanwhile, the radiation of heat at the top of the results in the cooling of that part of the atmosphere. The ELR assumes the atmosphere is still, but as air is heated it becomes buoyant, when a parcel of air rises, it expands, because the pressure is lower at higher altitudes. As the air expands, it pushes the surrounding air outward. As energy transfer to a parcel of air by way of heat is very slow, such a process is called an adiabatic process
6.
Earth
–
Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
7.
Frost
–
Frost is the coating or deposit of ice that may form in humid air in cold conditions, usually overnight. In temperate climates it most commonly appears as white crystals or frozen dew drops near the ground. Frost is composed of delicate branched patterns of ice crystals formed as the result of fractal process development, Frost is known to damage crops or reduce future crop yields, therefore farmers in those regions where frost is a problem often invest substantial means to prevent its formation. In most temperate countries such temperatures usually are the result of loss by radiation at night. The size of frost crystals varies depending on the time they have been building up, Frost crystals may be clear or translucent, but, like snow, a mass of frost crystals will scatter light in all directions, so that a coating of frost appears white. If a solid surface is chilled below the dew point of the humid air. If the water deposits as a liquid that freezes, it forms a coating that may look glassy, opaque, or crystalline. Depending on context, that also may be called atmospheric icing. The ice it produces differs in ways from crystalline frost. For desublimation to proceed the surface must be below the frost point of the air, the air must be humid, but not sufficiently humid to permit the condensation of liquid water, or icing will result instead of desublimation. The size of the crystals depends largely on the temperature, the amount of water vapor available, as a rule, except in conditions where supercooled droplets are present in the air, frost will form only if the deposition surface is colder than the surrounding air. For instance frost may be observed around cracks in cold wooden sidewalks when humid air escapes from the ground beneath. Other objects on which frost commonly forms are those with low specific heat or high thermal emissivity, such as blackened metals, the apparently erratic occurrence of frost in adjacent localities is due partly to differences of elevation, the lower areas becoming colder on calm nights. Where static air settles above an area of ground in the absence of wind, hoar frost refers to white ice crystals, deposited on the ground or loosely attached to exposed objects such as wires or leaves. They form on cold, clear nights when conditions are such that heat radiates out to the sky faster than it can be replaced from nearby sources such as wind or warm objects. Under suitable circumstances, objects cool to below the frost point of the surrounding air, such freezing may be promoted by effects such as flood frost or frost pocket. These occur when ground-level radiation losses cool air till it flows downhill and accumulates in pockets of cold air in valleys. Hoar frost may freeze in such low-lying cold air even when the air temperature a few feet above ground is well above freezing
8.
Fog
–
Fog consists of visible cloud water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earths surface. Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud and is influenced by nearby bodies of water, topography. In turn, fog has affected many human activities, such as shipping, travel, the term fog is typically distinguished from the more generic term cloud in that fog is low-lying, and the moisture in the fog is often generated locally. By definition, fog reduces visibility to less than 1 kilometre, for aviation purposes in the UK, a visibility of less than 5 kilometres but greater than 999 metres is considered to be mist if the relative humidity is 70% or greater, below 70%, haze is reported. Fog forms when the difference between air temperature and dew point is less than 2.5 °C or 4 °F, Fog begins to form when water vapor condenses into tiny liquid water droplets suspended in the air. Water vapor normally begins to condense on condensation nuclei such as dust, ice, Fog, like its elevated cousin stratus, is a stable cloud deck which tends to form when a cool, stable air mass is trapped underneath a warm air mass. Fog normally occurs at a relative humidity near 100% and this occurs from either added moisture in the air, or falling ambient air temperature. However, fog can form at lower humidities, and can fail to form with relative humidity at 100%. At 100% relative humidity, the air cannot hold additional moisture, thus, Fog can form suddenly and can dissipate just as rapidly. The sudden formation of fog is known as flash fog, Fog commonly produces precipitation in the form of drizzle or very light snow. Drizzle occurs when the humidity of fog attains 100% and the cloud droplets begin to coalesce into larger droplets. This can occur when the fog layer is lifted and cooled sufficiently, drizzle becomes freezing drizzle when the temperature at the surface drops below the freezing point. The inversion boundary varies its altitude primarily in response to the weight of the air above it, the marine layer, and any fogbank it may contain, will be squashed when the pressure is high, and conversely, may expand upwards when the pressure above it is lowering. Fog can form in a number of ways, depending on how the cooling that caused the condensation occurred, radiation fog is formed by the cooling of land after sunset by thermal radiation in calm conditions with clear sky. The warm ground produces condensation in the air by heat conduction. In perfect calm the fog layer can be less than a meter deep, radiation fogs occur at night, and usually do not last long after sunrise, but they can persist all day in the winter months especially in areas bounded by high ground. Radiation fog is most common in autumn and early winter, examples of this phenomenon include the Tule fog. Ground fog is fog that obscures less than 60% of the sky, advection fog occurs when moist air passes over a cool surface by advection and is cooled
9.
Midwestern United States
–
It was officially named the North Central region by the Census Bureau until 1984. Illinois is the most populous of the states and North Dakota the least, a 2012 report from the United States Census put the population of the Midwest at 65,377,684. The Midwest is divided by the Census Bureau into two divisions, the East North Central Division includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, all of which are also part of the Great Lakes region. Major rivers in the include, from east to west, the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River. Chicago is the most populated city in the American Midwest and the third most populous in the entire country, other large Midwest cities include, Indianapolis, Columbus, Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Wichita and St. Louis. Chicago and its suburbs form the largest metropolitan area with 9.8 million people, followed by Metro Detroit. Paul, Greater St. Louis, Greater Cleveland, Greater Cincinnati, Kansas City metro area, the term Midwestern has been in use since the 1880s to refer to portions of the central United States. A variant term, Middle West, has used since the 19th century. Another term sometimes applied to the general region is the heartland. Other designations for the region have fallen out of use, such as the Northwest or Old Northwest, the Northwest Territory was one of the earliest territories of the United States, stretching northwest from the Ohio River to northern Minnesota and upper-Mississippi. The upper-Mississippi watershed including the Missouri and Illinois Rivers was the setting for the earlier French settlements of the Illinois Country, economically the region is balanced between heavy industry and agriculture, with finance and services such as medicine and education becoming increasingly important. Its central location makes it a crossroads for river boats, railroads, autos, trucks. Politically the region swings back and forth between the parties, and thus is heavily contested and often decisive in elections, after the sociological study Middletown, which was based on Muncie, Indiana, commentators used Midwestern cities as typical of the nation. The region has a higher ratio than the Northeast, the West. Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance Old Northwest states, the states of the Old Northwest are also known as Great Lakes states and are east-north central in the United States. The Ohio River runs along the section while the Mississippi River runs north to south near the center. Many of the Louisiana Purchase states in the west-north central United States, are known as Great Plains states. The Midwest lies north of the 36°30′ parallel that the 1820 Missouri Compromise established as the line between future slave and non-slave states
10.
Anticyclone
–
Effects of surface-based anticyclones include clearing skies as well as cooler, drier air. Fog can also form overnight within a region of higher pressure, sir Francis Galton first discovered anticyclones in the 1860s. Preferred areas within a flow pattern in higher levels of the hydrosphere are beneath the western side of troughs. High-pressure systems are referred to as anticyclones. Their circulation is sometimes referred to as cum sole, subtropical high pressure zones form along the descending portion of the Hadley cell circulation. Upper-level high-pressure areas lie over tropical cyclones due to their warm core nature, surface anticyclones form due to downward motion through the troposphere, the atmospheric layer where weather occurs. Preferred areas within a flow pattern in higher levels of the troposphere are beneath the western side of troughs. Because they weaken with height, these systems are cold. Heating of the earth near the equator forces upward motion and convection along the trough or intertropical convergence zone. The divergence over the near-equatorial trough leads to air rising and moving away from the equator aloft, as air moves towards the mid-latitudes, it cools and sinks leading to subsidence near the 30° parallel of both hemispheres. This circulation known as the Hadley cell forms the subtropical ridge, many of the worlds deserts are caused by these climatological high-pressure areas. Because these anticyclones strengthen with height, they are known as warm core ridges, in the absence of rotation, the wind tends to blow from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. The stronger the pressure difference between a system and a low-pressure system, the stronger the wind. The coriolis force caused by Earths rotation gives winds within high-pressure systems their clockwise circulation in the northern hemisphere, friction with land slows down the wind flowing out of high-pressure systems and causes wind to flow more outward from the center. High-pressure systems are associated with light winds at the surface and subsidence of air from higher portions of the troposphere. Subsidence will generally warm an air mass by adiabatic heating, thus, high pressure typically brings clear skies. Because no clouds are present to reflect sunlight during the day, there is more incoming solar radiation, at night, the absence of clouds means that outgoing longwave radiation is not blocked, giving cooler diurnal low temperatures in all seasons. If the surface level relative humidity rises towards 100 percent overnight, the movement of continental arctic air masses to lower latitudes produces strong but vertically shallow high-pressure systems
11.
Tropical cyclone
–
Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by names such as hurricane, typhoon /taɪˈfuːn/, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, and simply cyclone. A hurricane is a storm that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Pacific Ocean, a typhoon occurs in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, Tropical cyclones typically form over large bodies of relatively warm water. They derive their energy through the evaporation of water from the ocean surface and this energy source differs from that of mid-latitude cyclonic storms, such as noreasters and European windstorms, which are fueled primarily by horizontal temperature contrasts. The strong rotating winds of a tropical cyclone are a result of the conservation of momentum imparted by the Earths rotation as air flows inwards toward the axis of rotation. As a result, they form within 5° of the equator. Tropical cyclones are typically between 100 and 2,000 km in diameter, Tropical refers to the geographical origin of these systems, which form almost exclusively over tropical seas. Cyclone refers to their nature, with wind blowing counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. The opposite direction of circulation is due to the Coriolis effect, in addition to strong winds and rain, tropical cyclones are capable of generating high waves, damaging storm surge, and tornadoes. They typically weaken rapidly over land where they are cut off from their energy source. For this reason, coastal regions are vulnerable to damage from a tropical cyclone as compared to inland regions. Heavy rains, however, can cause significant flooding inland, though their effects on human populations are often devastating, tropical cyclones can relieve drought conditions. They also carry heat away from the tropics and transport it toward temperate latitudes. Tropical cyclones are areas of low pressure in the troposphere. On Earth, the pressures recorded at the centers of tropical cyclones are among the lowest ever observed at sea level, the environment near the center of tropical cyclones is warmer than the surroundings at all altitudes, thus they are characterized as warm core systems. The near-surface wind field of a cyclone is characterized by air rotating rapidly around a center of circulation while also flowing radially inwards. At the outer edge of the storm, air may be nearly calm, however, due to the Earths rotation, as air flows radially inward, it begins to rotate cyclonically in order to conserve angular momentum. At an inner radius, air begins to ascend to the top of the troposphere and this radius is typically coincident with the inner radius of the eyewall, and has the strongest near-surface winds of the storm, consequently, it is known as the radius of maximum winds. Once aloft, air flows away from the center, producing a shield of cirrus clouds
12.
Fata Morgana (mirage)
–
A Fata Morgana is an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. Although the term Fata Morgana is sometimes applied to other, more kinds of mirages. Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, a Fata Morgana can be seen on land or at sea, in polar regions or in deserts. It can involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats, islands, a Fata Morgana is often rapidly changing. The mirage comprises several inverted and erect images that are stacked on top of one another, Fata Morgana mirages also show alternating compressed and stretched zones. The optical phenomenon occurs because rays of light are bent when they pass through air layers of different temperatures in a thermal inversion where an atmospheric duct has formed. A Fata Morgana requires a duct to be present, thermal inversion alone is not enough to produce this kind of mirage, while a thermal inversion often takes place without there being an atmospheric duct, an atmospheric duct cannot exist without there first being a thermal inversion. A Fata Morgana is most commonly seen in regions, especially over large sheets of ice which have a uniform low temperature. It can, however, be observed in almost any area, in polar regions the Fata Morgana phenomenon is observed on relatively cold days. However, in deserts, over oceans, and over lakes, to generate the Fata Morgana phenomenon, the thermal inversion has to be strong enough that the curvature of the light rays within the inversion layer is stronger than the curvature of the Earth. Under these conditions, the bend and create arcs. An observer needs to be within or below an atmospheric duct in order to be able to see a Fata Morgana, a Fata Morgana can be observed from any altitude within the Earths atmosphere, from sea level up to mountaintops, and even including the view from airplanes. A Fata Morgana can be described as a very complex superior mirage with more than three distorted erect and inverted images. The sequential image here shows sixteen photographic frames of a mirage of the Farallon Islands as seen from San Francisco, in the first fourteen frames, elements of the Fata Morgana mirage display alternations of compressed and stretched zones. The last two frames were photographed few hours later, around sunset time, at that point in time, the air was cooler while the ocean was probably a little bit warmer, which caused the thermal inversion to be not as extreme as it was few hours before. A mirage was still present at that point, but it was not as complex as few hours before sunset, the mirage was no longer a Fata Morgana, but instead had become a simple superior mirage. Gabriel Gruber and Tobias Gruber, who observed Fata Morgana above Lake Cerknica, were the first to study it in a laboratory setting, la Fata Morgana is the name of Morgan le Fay in Italian. Morgan le Fay, alternately known as Morgane, Morgain, Morgana and other variants, was described as a sorceress and antagonist of King Arthur
The dictionary definition of temperature inversion at Wiktionary