Dictionary of Environmental Health
A meteorological phenomenon of the TROPOSPHERE in which the normal TEMPERATURE GRADIENT in a body of air becomes inverted and an increase in height is accompanied by an increase in temperature rather than a decrease. This can happen for example in a valley in still conditions in which nighttime cooling of the air by the land reduces the temperature of the air to below that of the upper layers, effectively trapping the cool air below the warm.
The temperature gradient becomes distorted as heat from the warm layer above gradually diffuses to the cooler lower layers, but the normal pattern of convection currents does not appear.
An inversion layer is stable over a short period of time, say for a few days, and can trap emissions to the atmosphere from houses and industry, and cause a build-up of potentially harmful pollutants. Inversion layers can also be created by the warming of descending air in an ANTICYCLONE.
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