Frontolysis
Weakening and dissipation of a weather front
Frontolysis (also known as Frontal decay) in meteorology, is the dissipation or weakening of an atmospheric front. It is generally described as a decrease in temperature gradients between colliding air masses or can be caused by a shift in wind pattern. In contrary to areas of "Frontogenesis", the areas where air masses diverge are called areas of frontolysis.
On surface weather analysis maps, frontolysis is usually displayed as a dashed line with frontal markers on every second dash in the movement direction of the front. Typically, frontal markers are triangles for cold fronts and semicircles for warm fronts.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Frontolysis”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Demonstration of frontolysis.png by CycloneTheta, CC0
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