Role of the Water Vapour Greenhouse Effect in the Forecasting Of Fog Occurrence

Nocturnal measurements of air temperature, relative humidity, temperatureinversion-layer thickness, water vapour path and visibility-through-fog, madeunder non-foggy and foggy conditions in winter over two seasons at Delhi,are analysed to study the decrease in both rate of cooling and temperature inversion-layer thickness during the course of nights followed by fog occurrence.In particular, the decrease in the rate of cooling, compared to that on non-foggynights, is explained as due to the greenhouse warming effect by a layer of excessive,near-saturated water vapour trapped in a temperature inversion. Next, the linearprogramming technique is employed to forecast the occurrence of fog, where thevisibility-through-fog is minimized through its linear regression equation with thepair of variables, mean air temperature and temperature decrease over one hour(measuring rate of cooling at two convenient hours) in the pre-midnight period.This technique provides feasible solutions that enables one to forecast the occurrenceof radiative fog.