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I'm playing around with NOAA's GFS forecast data and I see that it contains both a "0 °C isotherm level" and a "Highest tropospheric freezing level".

Could someone tell me the difference between these two levels? I'd assume they are the same except in the case of an inversion.

Fred
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os1
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  • One of the effects is the change of freezing point with pressure: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/60170/freezing-point-of-water-with-respect-to-pressure – arkaia Apr 06 '16 at 15:53
  • Unfortunately that's not relevant in this situation, the temperature difference in freezing point is very small on atmospheric scales. – os1 Apr 07 '16 at 07:29
  • If you read the physics.stackexchange, that is exactly what they say. – arkaia Apr 07 '16 at 12:05
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    From browsing a few OPeNDAP servers that provide both the "highest tropospheric freezing level" and the "0C isotherm level", that's exactly what I see (that the difference between those levels is rather small). – David Hammen Apr 07 '16 at 12:55
  • I understand "0 °C isotherm level" as "Lowest tropospheric freezing level", so it is lowest versus highest. If temperature in the troposphere profile crosses 0 °C just once, their altitude is the same. But due various inversion layers, temperature can cross 0 °C multiple times. – Poutnik Feb 03 '22 at 13:42

1 Answers1

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Various processes affect the freezing point. Both CCN (cloud condensation nuclei) characteristics and drop size affect the freezing point.

BarocliniCplusplus
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