Stability-temperature correlations and their application to objective analysis

Stability parameters for standard atmospheric layers between 500 and l00 mb, are statistically related with 500 mb temperature and latitude in the Australian sector of the Southern Hemisphere. Methods are described whereby these relations are used to generate guess fields of temperature and geopotential thickness above 500 mb for hemispheric and limited area objective analyses. Over areas where the only input data are 1000 to 500 mb thicknesses based on satellite cloud picture interpretation, analyses above 500 mb using the above methods usually appear synoptically reasonable, and overcome typical defects of other methods previously used.