On different aspects of cold-pool life cycles in sinkholes

Sinkholes represent an excellent natural laboratory to study formation, the maintenance, fluctuations and dissipation of temperature inversions during fair weather episodes with undisturbed radiative conditions. One of the first sinkhole meteorological observations in history were made at a place in the Northeastern Austrian limestone Alps, called Gstettner Alm or Gruenloch. It was known from that early observations, that the air temperature at the bottom of the sinkhole may decrease to values some 30 degrees (Centigrade) or more below the ambient temperature at the same level, leading to the lowest temperatures in Central Europe known so far (around –52 deg C). Such extreme events can only occur when a snow cover is existing, which minimizes the surface heat flux. Many aspects of cold pool life cycle have been investigated in the recent decades. Meteorological events affecting the evolution of temperature inversions or cold-air pools in the 1-km-diameter, high-altitude (1300 m MSL)...