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Which boundary quantity completes the inversion?

  • A.The vertical velocity at the top of the domain over which the inversion is being carried out at that time
  • B.The wind at the surface
  • C.The value of the potential vorticity itself specified along the lateral edges of the region being considered
  • D.The potential temperature on the lower boundary

Answer: D

Bretherton showed that a boundary temperature distribution acts exactly as a sheet of potential vorticity concentrated at that boundary, so specifying it completes the problem. This is why a surface warm anomaly induces a circulation just as an interior anomaly does. The equivalence unifies boundary and interior effects within a single framework. A single measurement chosen to respond to the one asymmetry beats several that respond to shared behaviour.

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