Atmospheric conditions immediately prior to the formation of a tropical revolving storm.

Abstract

In a paper presented before the American Meteorological Society, E. Palmen (1948) stated that cumulonimbus convection is not sufficient for the production of a hurricane. Instead, he said that the air must be lifted over a relatively wide area. Workman (1962) recently noted the necessity for the storage of energy before a hurricane can form. Kuo (1960), Syono (1950), Lilly (1960) and other theorists have investigated the thermodynamical stability conditions of the atmosphere prior to the development of a hurricane. They tried to predict from the horizontal and vertical distributions of stability - or better, conditional instability of a hurricane - the consquences, i.e. either the development of cumulus convection or hurricane formation.