Strengths and Limitations

The SWEAT index is advantageous for diagnosing severe convective potential since it takes into account many important parameters including low-level moisture, instability and the vertical wind shear (both speed and direction). However, a limitation is that the inputs are from only 850 and 500 hPa levels, obscuring any inversions, dry layers etc. that may be present in intervening layers. It can also be somewhat cumbersome to compute, in the absence of an automated sounding routine such as the interactive skew-T.

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