Introduction

It has been said that without vertical motions in the atmosphere, there is no weather. Atmospheric stability provides a crucial control on the ability of air to rise or sink and on the resulting weather. For that reason, an assessment of stability is a critical part of the forecast process.
This section provides background on atmospheric stability definitions and concepts, as well as atmospheric processes that act to change stability. The discussion is framed within the context of the skew-T and builds upon what we have learned in the previous sections.