Atmospheric instability as a loss of a metastable equilibrium

TL;DR

This paper explores how atmospheric instabilities relate to metastable states, showing both cooling and heating can trigger rain, especially with charged water drops, and discusses implications of global warming on weather patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic framework for understanding atmospheric instabilities involving metastable states and highlights the role of heating in rain formation with charged droplets.

Findings

Heating can induce rain in charged clouds.

Global warming influences atmospheric stability.

Both cooling and heating can lead to precipitation.

Abstract

General thermodynamic theory of metastable states is used in this short note to try to understand better atmospheric instabilities. It is shown that not only cooling of a cloud can lead to rain, but heating also, especially when there are charged water drops in a cloud (in this case we have rain with lightning). The influence of the global warming on weather is discussed.