ADIABETIC VERSUS DIABETIC PROCESS
An ADIABATIC process deals with the changing temperature of a parcel of air due to the air
rising or sinking adiabatically. An adiabatic process assumes no heat, mass or momentum pass
across the air parcel boundary. The DIABATIC process on the other hand is any temperature
change of air not related to its adiabatic vertical displacement.
Air that rises will cool adiabatically. Air that sinks will warm adiabatically. Diabetic temperature
changes on the other hand can occur in the form of diabetic heating or diabetic cooling. The
prime contributor to diabetic heating is the sun. Warm soils (via sun's radiation) can also produce
diabetic heating. The sun's energy warms the earth's surface and thus warms parcels of air near
the surface even though they are not rising or sinking. The atmosphere absorbs some of the sun's
energy before it gets to the surface. A good example is the ozone layer. Some of the sun's
shortwave energy is absorbed by the ozone layer and thus warms it. Examples of diabetic cooling
include evaporative cooling and the emission of long wave energy from the earth's surface.
Often, adiabatic and diabetic temperature changes occur at the same time (First example:
evaporational cooling of air in the mid-levels of the atmosphere causes it to become more dense
and fall to the earth's surface; The air cools adiabatically through evaporational cooling then
warms adiabatically as it sinks to the surface; a parcel of air could be experiencing evaporational
cooling at the same time it is sinking and warming adiabatically, the cooling and warming at the
same time will try to offset each other). The key concept is that the temperature change of a
parcel of air due to diabetic heating/cooling is INDEPENDENT from the temperature change
caused by adiabatic heating or cooling. Temperature changes due to diabetic heating or cooling
by themselves do not necessarily depend on if the parcel is rising or sinking. (Second example:
The sun warms a parcel of air near the earth's surface diabatically; This parcel then becomes less
dense and rises and therefore cools adiabatically).
Diabetic temperature change also occurs when parcels of air are not able to obey the adiabatic
assumption. In situations with turbulence (very common in the PBL) heat, mass and momentum
will cross the parcel boundary.
Condensational warming is a diabetic process, but due to its extreme importance to convection
and thermodynamic instability it has been given the name of the moist adiabatic lapse rate.
Notice that the terminology calls heating due to condensation adiabatic! Actually, there are two
separate phenomena occurring at the same time. One phenomenon is the parcel of air cooling at
the DALR. The second phenomenon is the parcel warming through latent heat release of
condensation. These two processes partially offset each other. Since the DALR is greater than
the rate of warming due to latent heat release, the saturated parcel still cools as it rises. However,
it cools at a lesser rate than it would if it were unsaturated. The moist adiabatic lapse rate is a
combination of adiabatic cooling and diabetic heating due to condensation. Understanding
adiabatic and diabetic heating/cooling will help you gain a grasp on why temperature changes in
the atmosphere the way they do.
