REVITALISE Visualization Station

Earth Science: Meteorology and Atmospheric Readings

The two visualizations at right represent data in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) as measured by a radiosonde (a weather balloon that has a radio transmitter attached). Data such as temperature (the black line on the right of the graph) and the dewpoint temperature (the black line on the left of the graph) are plotted here on two different types of graphs:

  1. Stuve: in this graphical representation, the temperature and the dewpoint are plotted with the temperature along the x-axis and the pressure (in millibars) along the y-axis. In the case of the Stuve diagram, the temperature lines are shown vertically.
  2. Skew-T: in this graphical representation, the same data is plotted, but the temperature lines are represented diagonally.
How do these two graphs -- which represent the exact same data -- provide different insights into the meteorological data?
stuve graph

skew graph