Hidden Weather Factor

As we know, predicting the weather is difficult because of it's great complexity. I believe that it is not that weather is so complicated, it is that the earth on which the weather is created is so messy.

The processes of weather itself are fairly simple. Water evaporates into vapor and when it reaches a certain height where the air is cooler and slighly thinner it condenses on dust particles because the air there cannot hold as much water vapor as the air at the surface where the water evaporated.

This forms clouds, which remain aloft because the droplets of water composing them are so tiny. But when the cloud becomes laden with more water than it can hold, the water falls as precipitation. This often happens where cold air is in contact with warm air because cold air can hold less water vapor than it could when it was warmer.

At the same time we have wind, which moves the weather and transfers heat. The earth heats unevenly. In those areas where it heats more, air rises. In those areas where it heats less, air descends.

This causes movement of air along the surface of the earth and an opposite movement of air high above the earth. People who live near a large body of water know that the breeze tends to move from the sea to the land during the day and to reverse at night. This is because the water is much slower to change temperature than the land so that during the day the sea is cooler than the land while at night the opposite is true.

Unfortunately, weather is not this simple. The earth's surface is very unenven and messy. Masses of land are of many varied sizes as are the stretches of water between them. Mountain ranges block the flow of moisture-laden air so that deserts form.

The spinning of the earth is an important factor in weather because it diverts the path of wind and ocean currents, which are also a factor. Cold ocean currents also create deserts on adjacent land masses because cold water does not produce much evaporation. Warm ocean currents make land at high latitudes much warmer than it would be otherwise, such as the Gulf Stream warming northern Europe. Ocean currents are complex in themselves because they are blocked and diverted not only by the spinning of the earth, the Coriolis Force, but by intervening land masses.

So the reason that weather is so complicated and difficult to predict is not the basic weather processes in themselves but rather that these simple processes operate on an uneven, messy and haphazard earth.

I have noticed another factor which must be an influence in global weather patterns but which I have never heard or seen referred to anywhere. We know that as the earth orbits the sun, the northern hemisphere points toward the sun in June and away in January while the southern hemisphere does the opposite. So overall the earth has the same exposure to the sun throughout the year.

However, we know that the basic cause of weather is the uneven heating of the earth by the sun. What I notice is that there is a lot more land in the northern hemisphere and a lot more water in the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere is just over half water while the southern hemisphere is about 90% water.

Land and water absorb solar energy in very different ways. Water has a great capacity to absorb heat, much more so than land. What this means is that the earth does not absorb heat evenly throughout the year. It absorbs more in January and less in June, although it may not feel like it to those who live in northern temperate climates.

This factor is increased by the fact that the earth is actually closer to the sun in January. The earth's average distance from the sun is about 93 million miles but in January it is at about 91 million miles while it is at about 95 million miles in June.

This variation in the absorption of solar energy over the course of a year has got to be an underlying factor in global weather that we are not considering.

There is yet another factor that I have thought of, although it is certainly a minor one. Given that the moon has an albedo of 7%, that is, it reflects that much of the solar energy that falls on it, I calculate that the earth receives 1.24 ten millionths ( 1.000000124 ) more solar energy when there is a full moon than when there is a new moon.

The Collision Imbalance And Evaporation-Dissolution Balance

I would like to introduce some new insight into the operation of the atmosphere that I have had. This is not about weather but about the basic support mechanism of the atmosphere.

Earth's atmosphere consists of diatomic molecules of oxygen and nitrogen with some rarer components like carbon dioxide and argon. These molecules continually collide with each other as they move around with the energy of heat. During these molecular collisions a molecule in the air has, by random chance on a large scale, an equal chance of being knocked upward or downward, eastward or westward, northward or southward.

However there is another factor involved, the surface of the earth. Molecules in the air moving downward collide with the surface and bounce off. The surface thus redirects molecules moving downward to moving upward so that of the six possible directions that a molecule can be moving, the favored (favoured) direction is upward. This is what I am naming the "collision imbalance" and claiming that it is what causes the atmosphere as we know it to exist.

Since the atmosphere is supported by molecular collisions and the resulting "upward bias" due to the surface of the earth, this means that entropy must be a factor. The collisions supporting the atmosphere against gravity must necessarily be less than 100% efficient. I find that it is this entropy, collision inefficiency, that limits the height of the atmosphere and makes it most dense at lower altitudes. This means that when we measure the decreasing air density with increasing altitude, we are actually measuring the entropy of the collisions supporting the atmosphere.

WATER AND THE ATMOSPHERE

If you look out across a body of water, do you notice something strange? If we stop and think for a minute, we realize that water is actually lighter than air and thus should be floating in the air.

A water molecule consists of one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen. Oxygen has 8 protons in it's atom and hydrogen has 1. So, water has a molecular weight of 10. Air consists of diatomic molecules mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. Nitrogen has an atomic number of 7 so that with a diatomic molecule, it's molecular weight is 14. Oxygen has a diatomic molecular weight of 16. Carbon has 6 protons in it's molecule so a molecule of carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 24.

So, if the oxygen in the air has a molecular weight of 16, nitrogen of 14 and carbon dioxide of 24, why does water, with a light molecular weight of 10 collect below the atmosphere in oceans, lakes and, rivers instead of floating in the air? And why does rain fall from the sky?

It is true that water does float because it is lighter than air. This is why wet air causes lower barometric pressure than dry air and the barometer drops when a storm is approaching. In fact, water would not evaporate at all if it was not lighter than air. Yet, the fact also remains that water weighs about 800 times as much as air at sea level.

The reason, of course, is that water molecules are strongly polar. The molecule consists of one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen. This means that one side of the molecule is more positively charged and the other side more negatively charged. This causes water molecules to bond together into a matrix since opposite charges attract.

Since water molecules are bonded together by this hydrogen bonding but diatomic oxygen and nitrogen is not, a molecule in the air occupies about 120 times the space as a water molecule. This is why water is actually lighter than air but when many water molecules bond together, it becomes heavier than air.

This hydrogen bonding of water molecules makes it possible for water to collect into lakes and oceans with air above but when a water molecule is moving fast enough by the kinetic energy of heat, it can break free of the matrix of water molecules and become part of the air. This is the process known as evaporation and the water becomes water vapor (vapour).

The reason we have rain and other precipitation is that these hydrogen bonds between water molecules form again if water molecules in the air are close enough to come in contact with each other. One water molecule has a molecular weight of 10 so it will float in air. But if two bond together, their molecular weight is 20 and they will then become heavier than air.

Clouds form because the lighter water molecules get knocked higher by the collisions but the air gets too thin due to entropy at a certain altitude to support them. Water molecules thus tend to concentrate at that altitude where they can bond together and thus condense.

THE EVAPORATION- DISSOLUTION EXCHANGE

Now that I have given my version of how the atmosphere works, I would like to introduce another new concept in the operation of the earth's atmosphere. We tend to think of the evaporation of water into the air and the dissolution of oxygen and carbon dioxide into the water as arbitrary and unrelated processes. I believe that there is a very close relationship between the two.

In fact, evaporation and dissolution are mirror images of each other and much more systematic than we had supposed. Think of all the water in all the clouds and all the water vapor (vapour) in the air. Now, think of all the oxygen that dissolves in the world's water that fish require for breathing and the carbon dioxide that aquatic plants require. My claim is that the two must be at least roughly equal.

The molecular motion caused by heat causes the air and water to merge. When a molecule of water gains enough speed by heat energy to escape the water matrix, it escapes into the air. This upsets the water matrix held together by the hydrogen bonds between water molecules. It requires less energy for the water to "grab" a molecule of oxygen or carbon dioxide from the air to replace the missing water molecule's spot in the matrix than it does to rearrange the matrix.

Thus, according to my scenario, the molecule of water that escapes into the air by evaporation must be replaced by one of oxygen, carbon dioxide or, possibly nitrogen. The lighter water molecule gains enough energy to break free of the hydrogen bonds and the heavier oxygen or carbon dioxide molecule slips in to replace it, thus preserving the polar water molecule matrix.

Oxygen and carbon dioxide readily dissolve in water because most of a water molecule is also oxygen and both have polarity that enables them to fit into the matrix of polar water molecules. Carbon dioxide dissolves in water more easily than oxygen simply because it is heavier, it sinks down to the bottom of the water so that aquatic plants can breathe. Nitrogen dissolves in water poorly simply because it is lighter than oxygen.

So, I am claiming that there is a fairly precise one to one exchange between the evaporation of water and the dissolution of oxygen and carbon dioxide into water across the world. Some proof of this is the fact that no matter how much or how little oxygen or CO2 is dissolved in a quantity of water, there is little or no discernable change in the volume of the water.

The Condensation Line

There is a great mystery concerning the sky above us that I have never seen referred to before but for which I believe I have a simple solution.

There are several different types of cloud that regularly form in the atmosphere. The fluffy white low clouds are known as cumulus. The high wispy clouds across a blue sky are called cirrus. The shapeless sheets of low cloud are stratus. The three basic types of cloud can combine to form several others, such as cirrocumulus. There are also the mid-level clouds with the alto- prefix, which means high. This gives us altocumulus and altostratus.

Clouds are relatively simple phenomenon. When the earth's surface is heated and significant vertical currents of air rise, cumulus clouds will form. If water evaporates and then condenses on the tiny particles of dust in the air without a strong vertical motion, stratus (meaning layer) clouds will form.

These low clouds are thicker than the higher altostratus and altocumulus clouds simply because the air is denser at lower altitudes and can thus hold more condensed water vapor (vapour). As at lower altitudes, whether stratus or cumulus form depend on whether there are significant vertical current in the air (which would form cumulus) or not (which would form stratus).

When clouds form at very high altitudes, five miles or eight km or so, the condensing water vapor forms ice crystals instead of water droplets, creating cirrus clouds. These high wispy clouds tend to be aligned in the direction of the often high winds at such altitudes.

We can see that the factors in cloud formation are relatively simple; the altitude of condensation and movement of the air at that point, as well as the temperature where the water condenses. The different types of cloud found at different altitudes make it easier to forecast the weather. At a warm or cold front, where an air mass of one temperature is advancing while the other is retreating, the heavier cold air will tend to form a wedge under the lighter warm air.

Sailors of centuries ago learned that when they saw high cirrus clouds one day and lower altocumulus or altostratus the next, that a warm front would arrive soon. Since warm air can hold more water than cold air, that meant rain because the vapour in the warm would condense and fall as precipitation when it came into contact with cold air. Likewise, when the cloud types got higher from one day to the next, that meant that a cold front had passed by.

The great mystery concerning the atmosphere that I have never seen referred to before is WHY do different types of cloud form? The process of cloud formation and operation are well-understood. But why does one batch of water form a cumulus cloud when it condenses in the atmosphere and another batch forms a cirrus cloud?

Humidity is not really a factor in which type of cloud forms. All clouds form when water evaporates, goes up into the atmosphere where the temperature drops as we get higher, known as the adiabatic rate, and condenses on particles of dust. The small droplets of condensed water on dust that form clouds can be "supercooled", meaning that such water can remain liquid even in freezing temperatures.

This is why there are clouds in winter. Altitude of condensation is an important factor because the air gets thinner and colder as we go higher, as is the presence or lack of strong vertical currents of air, but that still does not explain why different types of cloud form from water that evaporates.

I have found a simple answer to this question. The time of day that evaporated water condenses on dust particles in the atmosphere is what determines what type of cloud will be the result. There is a line that is usually at or near the earth's surface during the night. I will call it the condensation line. It is the line in the air parallel to the earth's surface above which some of the evaporated water will condense due to the cooler temperature that comes with altitude.

We know that fog tends to form at night and often dissipates when the sun rises and begins to warm the earth. Fog is basically a stratus cloud at ground level. Dew, or frost in cooler weather, is water that condensed during the night. This is because the condensation line was low enough during the night for the fog to form but rose when the sun heated the ground, causing the fog to evaporate.

We also know that cumulus clouds tend to form in the morning. This is because the sun heats the earth after rising, causing vertical air currents, as some pieces of ground warm more than sorrounding land. These vertical air currents carry a lot of water vapor, which condenses upon reaching about 4,000 feet altitude (about 1.2 km).

You will notice how the bases of cumulus clouds tend to form straight lines, which are at the same level as the bases of nearby clouds. This line represents the condensation line at the time the clouds formed early in the day. Cumulus clouds, unlike stratus clouds, are spaced because if they are formed by vertical air currents, obviously there has to be compensating downdrafts or a vacuum would form at ground level. As the day goes on, the condensation line rises.

Remember that the sun does not heat the air directly. Rather, the sun heats the earth which then heats the air. Logically, the longer the sun shines on the earth, the more it will warm the air.

Since water in the air condenses to form clouds when the air temperature drops to a certain point with altitude, the longer the sun has been warming the earth, the higher the water vapour will have to go to condense and form clouds. The line that I am defining as the condensation line of cloud formation will thus get higher and higher as the day goes on and then drop back toward the earth at night. This explains why different types of cloud form from the same kind of water in the air.

Cloud type depends on altitude because the air gets thinner as we go higher. Since the condensation line rises from morning until evening, the time of condensation determines the altitude and thus the cloud type. This does not mean that the cloud types visible can be used to tell the time of day, it only shows what time of day those clouds formed. Low clouds form in the morning, middle clouds in early afternoon and high cirrus clouds in late afternoon or evening.

I also believe there to be a significant amount of evaporation from low clouds that formed earlier in the day to rise to higher altitudes and then re-condense. We can see small cumulus clouds gradually diminishing in size in the afternoon with no water falling as precipitation.

Obviously, this model of cloud formation operates differently over water as compared to land. Water is slower to heat up during the day but holds more heat overnight than land. This could mean that middle clouds are more likely to form over water than over land.

This concept opens the possibility of simplifying our description of the weather.

There are several parameters which we express in order to describe the weather. These include temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, barometric pressure and sometimes, cloud ceiling.

Barometric pressure is useful in weather forecasting because, since water is actually lighter than air by molecule, wet air is lighter than dry air. As a storm approaches, the barometer drops because the air gets more and more full of water until water falls as precipitation when the air cannot hold any more. The relative humidity is the amount of water in the air in comparison to the amount that the air is capable of holding at that temperature. Warmer air can support more water vapor (vapour) than cold air. Winds bring in weather conditions from other places.

Water vapour (vapor) reaches a certain altitude and then condenses because air gets both thinner and colder with increasing altitude. This water condenses into tiny droplets on particles of dust, salt and, smoke which act as condensation nuclei, and the result is the formation of clouds.

Meanwhile, air near the surface is warmer and denser so water keeps evaporating, even when the air higher up is at it's limit for holding water. This is the reason for precipitation, if the air was uniform in density and temperature, it would absorb all the water it could and then evaporation would cease. But as it is, precipitation is to correct the imbalance of water capacity of the air against the total water which has evaporated into the air.

Condensation is somewhat more complex than this. If there is a strong updraft, it can carry vapor (vapour) to greater heights where there is still water-holding capacity. This is how towering cumulo-nimbus thunderclouds form. Water that has condensed into cloud may re-evaporate and re-condense at a higher altitude and falling rain may re-evaporate before reaching the ground.

Notice that it very rarely rains heavily when there is blue sky showing. This is because it indicates that there are areas nearby which still have room for more water to condense and so there is no reason yet for precipitation to fall.

The Condensation Line is the line at which water which has evaporated condenses to form cloud. The line rises as the day progresses and the temperature increases. But often, the condensation line will reach a certain altitude and then effectively halt. This will be due to the inability of the air above the line to hold more water because of either cold or humidity already present.

The Mean Condensation Altitude which I am presenting here is simply the mean (average) altitude at which water vapor (vapour) condenses into cloud on a given day. Obviously, if there is a clear blue sky with more room available to hold water, then there will be no Mean Condensation Altitude.

The Mean Condensation Altitude would be an excellent predictor of precipitation. Notice that clouds are always low during heavy rain. It can rain from high clouds, but only lightly.

The chance of precipitation and the intensity of that precipitation would be inversely proportional to the Mean Condensation Altitude. When water does not rise very far before condensing, it can only mean that the air is reaching the limit of it's ability to hold water.

Weather reports give the temperature, barometric pressure and, relative humidity. But what it all comes down to is the altitude to which water vapour (vapor) is rising before it condenses. The Mean Condensation Altitude is a function of all three of these parameters, it is simply the average altitude to which evaporated water is rising before condensing into cloud. The more full of water the air is, the lower that altitude will be and the more likely it is to rain. If there is a dense layer of cloud, the Mean Condensation Altitude would be a horizontal line halfway through the cloud.

Let's start making the MCA a regular parameter of weather reports.

The Blue Sky Hypothesis

One day, I realized that if there was no land on earth, if the surface was all ocean, the sky would not be blue.

It is well-established that electromagnetic radiation, such as light and radio waves, are reflected by objects that are similar in size to the wavelength of the radiation. This is why AM radio signals are interrupted as you pass under a bridge overpass, while FM signals are not. The AM signals have a longer wavelength, similar to the width of the overpass. The shorter FM signals reflect around it.

The blue color (colour) of the sky is caused by particles of dust in the air. The size of most of the particles is such that the yellow, orange and, red light from the sun has a longer wavelength and can go "around" the dust particles while the blue light of shorter wavelength, similar to the size of the particles, is reflected and scattered by them. This is why the yellow, orange and, red light of the sun comes straight to us while the blue is scattered all around the sky.

During the evening, the sunlight has to pass through a thicker section of atmosphere to get to us due to it's angle in the sky. This means that the light must pass through more dust particles before we see it. This causes the next longest wavelength, yellow, to be scattered out by the dust in the atmosphere so that the evening sun appears orange or red. From space, a blue line can be seen across the earth where dusk is at the moment caused by blue being scattered out of the atmosphere altogether.

We know that a prism, a triangular piece of glass, will break a beam of white light down into it's component colors (colours). White is a mixture of all colours (colors) and consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and, violet. Clouds consist of millions of water droplets condensed on dust and snow consists of millions of ice crystals. These appear white because they act as millions of tiny prisms, breaking down incoming light into it's component colors (colours) and then recombining it into white.

The blue of the sky is generally light in tone because there is plenty of white light mixed with it from water in the air. The sky in the desert tends to be a darker blue than skies elsewhere due to the lack of water. This is because there is more dust to scatter blue light around and less water to scatter white light to mix with it to produce the usual light blue sky.

I would like to speculate that the sky tends to appear a lighter blue in tone toward the horizon because of the different light scattering methods of dust in comparison with the water in the air. The water refracts light while the dust reflects light. Thus, dust in the air returns more of the light that falls on it to space than the water in the air does.

This means that when you look at the blue of the sky toward the horizon, you are looking through more of both dust and water than when you look straight above you. The increase in dust toward the horizon because of the thicker atmosphere reflects more blue light back to space than the increased amount of water in the air that you are looking through sends white light back to space. This is due to the simple difference between reflection and refraction.

I cannot see that this has ever been pointed out before. The air itself has little effect on light or we would not be able to see faint stars in space. Land is the source of dust on the earth, except for meteors. This can only mean that if there was no land on earth, if the world was all ocean, the sky would be white instead of blue. It is true that salt from the oceans also gets into the air and acts upon light in the same way as dust but it seems to me that this occurs primarily where ocean waves break against a shore.

If the earth had weaker gravity, meaning that larger dust particles could stay aloft, the sky could appear yellow, or even orange, instead of blue. If the gravity was so strong that no dust or water was in the atmosphere, the daytime sky would be black and the brighter stars would be visible in the daytime.

The Peaceful Pacific Ocean

The posting below this one is titled "The Atlas Barrier". It is about a phenomenon that I noticed concerning the formation of barrier islands on the coasts of the U.S. and lands around the Caribbean Sea. These barrier islands are formed by hurricanes over time.

The thing that puzzled me was why the U.S. states of North Carolina and Florida are known for their barrier islands while the two states with a coastline between these two, South Carolina and Georgia, have far less barrier island along their coasts.

The answer lay across the ocean in north Africa. Hurricanes depend on the dust that is swept out over the ocean by the east wind across the Sahara desert. This dust in the air provides condensation nuclei for a vast amount of the water that evaporates from the warm ocean to condense upon, thus building the foundation of a hurricane.

I pointed out that the circular motion of a hurricane counteracts the earth's gravity so that they rotate eastward with the earth less than the sorrounding air without this circular momentum. The result is that hurricanes seem to be moving westward because it is actually the earth which is rotating eastward into them. Hurricanes also tend to be pulled away from the equator because the earth has more spin away from the equator and this pulls the hurricane along.

The reason for the gap in barrier islands along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, in comparison with North Carolina to the north and Florida to the south, is that the Atlas Mountains in Morocco block the east wind and thus the dust that would be otherwise carried out over the Atlantic Ocean. The dust that gets out immediately south of these mountains form hurricanes that go to Florida and southward and the same for the dust to the north to North Carolina.

I would like to expand on this concept to explain something else about global geography that I have not seen pointed out anywhere. Consider the Pacific Ocean, it is the world's largest ocean by far and could cover all of the land on earth with plenty of room to spare. It also gets much deeper than the other oceans, the Marianas Trench drops down about 11 kilometers.

Yet, the very term "pacific" means peaceful. It originates with the same root word as "pacify" or "pacifist". The Pacific Ocean is not completely peaceful, as far as weather goes, but it generally lacks the hurricanes of the Atlantic Ocean and the Monsoons of the Indian Ocean.

Now, keeping the Atlas Barrier scenario in mind, I would like to speculate that the reason that this vast ocean is so peaceful compared with the others is that is is virtually sorrounded by mountains. If you look at a map showing the Pacific Ocean in a world atlas or on http://www.maps.google.com/ it is easy to see that virtually wherever this ocean meets land, there are mountains. These mountain ranges around the perimeter of the ocean block most dust that would be carried out over the ocean and would serve as condensation nuclei for storm clouds in the same way as does the Atlas Mountains.

The Pacific Ocean is situated on a large tectonic plate all it's own and the mountain ranges that virtually sorround it were formed by tectonic collision or volcanism. It is truly a paradox that the so-called "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific, referring to volcanoes and the mountains thus formed, actually make the ocean more peaceful in terms of weather compared with the other oceans so that it is given a name meaning "peace".

There is little dust from land over the wide expanse of water and so storm clouds do not form as easily. The other two major oceans have no such shielding. There is a fourth ocean, the Arctic Ocean but it is virtually covered by ice.

There is one major exception to this, that of Australia. This is a largely dry continent that does contribute dust to the air. Australia is south of the equator and circular storms are guided by the earth's rotation but it affects weather in the northern hemisphere because winds from equatorial hadley cells pull Australian dust north of the equator.

The result is the typhoons of southeast Asia, particularly the South China Sea and the legendary Monsoons of India and Bangladesh. Both head west due to the eastward rotation of the earth and are also pulled northward by it's spin.

A hadley cell is the meteorological process where hot air rises from around the equator across the world, this creates a low pressure area that draws in air from the south and north and the air which originally rose from around the equator descends to take it's place. Thus a vertical circuit of air is formed. The hadley cells at the equator operate in this way between about 30 degrees latitude to the north and south.

A ferrell cell is the opposite of a hadley cell, where some of the descending air moves further north or south. These cells skew the prevailing winds, easterlies around the equator, westerlies further north and south, and easterlies again around the poles, to make up the earth's general patterns of wind.

We can presume that if Australia was wet and green, and so did not contribute much dust, that there would not be Monsoons or typhoons in Asia. The obvious reason that there are not hurricanes in South America like there are in North America and the Gulf of Mexico is that central Africa is green and does not give off enough dust. Southern Africa is drier but it is too far from the equator and the water offshore too cold to form hurricanes.

This concept also operates in reverse. It seems to me that the reason Australia is relatively dry is that the easterlies which might bring rain are largely blocked by the Great Dividing Range along the east coast of Australia.

Prevailing wind direction can make all the difference in the climate of an region. Have you ever wondered why the Mediterranean area is relatively dry? Spain and Portugal are just as close to water as are Britain and Ireland. But you can see in the satellite imagery that rural areas in Britain or Ireland have that lush green color (colour) while Spain and Portugal are obviously much drier. It is because the prevailing west wind in northern Europe brings water that has evaporated from the Atlantic Ocean, while the east wind of the Mediterranean brings dry air that has passed over mostly land.

The intense storms produced by abundant dust leave drought to the west of where they dump most of their water. The thought came to me that if not for the Monsoons that drench south Asia, the water would be carried as far west as the Arabian Peninsula. This area is, of course, one of the driest on earth but the reason it does not seem to be a major source of storm dust is that it is blocked from getting to the Mediterranean area by highland and mountains around the western part of Saudi Arabia.

This explanation of the peacefulness of the Pacific Ocean is unrelated to my posting on this blog, "The Wave Pressure Hypothesis" about why the ocean has such favorable (favourable) surfing waves.

The Atlas Barrier

I think I have solved a mystery of the geography of the United States and it has opened up the possibility of gaining a greater understanding of weather and the atmosphere as well.

BARRIER ISLANDS

The mystery concerns the extensive barrier islands that exist offshore along so much of America's Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines. The states that are best-known for these barrier islands are: North Carolina, Florida and, Texas but they can be found along the coasts of many other states also.

These barrier islands were formed by hurricanes over millions of years and can easily be seen on any map. Here is a map link but it would be even better to follow along with a world atlas. http://www.maps.google.com/ . These barrier islands are extensive along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of America, Mexico and, islands of the Caribbean. But none are to be found as we get closer to the equator.

Starting at New York's Long Island, we see such a barrier island along it's south coast. Barrier islands continue along the coast southward through New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and, Virginia. But these are relatively minor in comparison with a state really known for it's barrier islands, North Carolina. The barrier islands here are so extensive as to encompass Albermarle and Pamlico Sounds.

On Florida's Atlantic coast, Titusville, Melbourne and, Miami Beach as well as the John F. Kennedy Space Center are built on barrier islands. The islands are generally less prominent on Florida's Gulf coast but are very noticable at Fort Myers-Cape Coral and from Sarasota to Bradenton. The land on which Clearwater and St. Petersburg are located is too wide to be a barrier island.

With the exception of the northwest stretch of the Florida coast, barrier islands continue all along the U.S. Gulf Coast and southward into Mexico. The islands are particularly wide in Texas and northern Mexico. There are two notable stretches of barrier island along the Caribbean coast of southern Mexico, at Ciudad Madero-Tampico and also at Ciudad de Carmen. However, as we move southward along the coast of Central America, there are practically no barrier islands at all.

About half of the north coast of Cuba is barrier island, and another chain is south of the island. The shallow waters around the Bahamas was once land worn away by advancing continental shelves but the islands themselves are mostly elongated in shape as we would expect barrier islands to be. The island of Bermuda also has the same shape and may well be primarily a barrier island. The Turks and Caicos Islands as well as the Cayman Islands seem to be barrier islands also.

However the Lesser Antilles, the string of islands from Puerto Rico to Trinidad are volcanic in origin and are not barrier islands. Neither is the Great Barrier Reef to the east of Australia, which is composed of coral.

One thing is very obvious to me. These barrier islands are located just where hurricanes tend to come ashore. The more hurricanes tend to meet land at a certain coastal point, the more extensive the barrier islands will be at that point. There is an idea that these islands were formed by meltwater at the end of the last ice age but I consider that as virtually impossible. For one thing, the barrier islands are more extensive in the south than the north.

The reason that no barrier island is seen adjacent to New Orleans, which was struck by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 is that any such island was buried by the sediment from the river which formed the Mississippi Delta. The barrier islands on Florida's Gulf coast can be considered as "reverse" barrier islands because they were formed by storms that had already passed over, not ones that were approaching. It is true that hurricanes fade out over land but the lands in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico such as Cuba, Hispaniola and, Florida are not wide enough to stop hurricanes from reaching the Texas and Mexico coasts.

There is actually a dynamic interplay between the continental shelves and the barrier islands. The mass of land that was once where the Bahamas are located has mostly disappeared but the barrier islands remain because they are being continuously rebuilt by storms. Florida and Mexico's Yucutan Peninsula were once far larger than today but are sorrounded by vast areas of shallow water because they have been eroded away by advancing continental shelves. The expanse of shallow water along the south coast of eastern Cuba is a result of the same process.

HURRICANE FORMATION AND MOVEMENT

Hurricanes form because the motion in their circular vortex is a vector between the vertical rising of wet air and the spin of the earth. Hurricanes are limited to a certain range of latitudes because there is not enough heat to generate the powerful vertical movement of air at high latitudes and there is not enough spin too near the earth's equator. This is also why extensive barrier islands are not found near the equator and fade out at high latitudes.

The root of the circular motion that gets started is the polarity of diatomic oxygen and nitrogen. Small eddys merge together to form a large vortex as more and more air gets pulled in. The reason that there is no such extensive barrier islands along the Pacific Coast of North America is very simple, the hurricanes that form the barrier islands always move westward or northwestward.

I can explain why but it requires a new understanding of the relationship between the atmosphere and the earth. Let's apply the concepts of astronomy to meteorology and think of each atom in the atmosphere as a tiny moon that orbits the earth. Atoms in the atmosphere are bound to the earth by gravity but do have more gravitational freedom than those atoms that are actually attached to the earth. The circular vortex that forms counteracts the earth's gravity and the storm, while still gravitationally bound to the earth, becomes less bound than the sorrounding air that is not part of the vortex.

The tremendous centrifugal force outward creates the very low pressure that is within the hurricane. The earth rotates eastward while the molecules of air within the hurricane become semi-independent of the earth's gravity due to their rapid circular motion. The hurricane does move eastward along with the rotation of the earth but it is less bound to the earth by gravity than the sorrounding air that is not in the vortex. This causes the hurricane to move eastward, but more slowly than the surface of the earth. Thus, hurricanes seem to us to always move westward or northwestward but it is actually because the earth is rotating us eastward into the hurricane.

My hypothesis is that to fully understand circular storms, we must consider the atmosphere in astronomical terms is borne out by the tremendous winds high above the earth in the stratosphere. If it is the uneven heating of the earth's surface by the sun that is the primary factor in causing the movement of air, then we can logically assume that winds will be greatest near the earth's surface. Ten kilometers up in the sky, the air is much thinner and colder but that is where the tremendous winds of the stratosphere are to be found.

How can this be if the winds should be the most intense closest to the earth's surface? If you want to see how fast the winds can be at high altitudes, you need only look at those high, wispy cirrus clouds. These are below the stratosphere, in the high troposphere, but they are always lined up in the direction of the winds at that altitude.

The higher winds at higher altitudes can be easily explained by my concept of the atmosphere in astronomical terms as trillions of tiny moons bound by the earth's gravity. Those atoms at higher altitudes are less bound by the earth's gravity than those at lower altitudes. So, the air at high altitudes is perceived by us as often moving at very high speeds but it is actually the earth rotating under this air, although there is also lateral movements.

So, you may be wondering why hurricanes apparently move to the north as well as to the west if the earth rotates eastward. The answer to this lies in the curvature of the earth. Due to the north-south span of a hurricane, the earth's surface under the northern part is moving more slowly than the area under the southern part if we are in the northern hemisphere. This pulls the hurricane northward to some extent.

Imagine a log on ground that is moving under it, but the ground at one end of the log is moving faster than the ground at the other end. The log would be pulled toward the end that is moving more slowly.

As the earth rotates it is, of course, moving fastest at the equator because that is where it's circumference is greatest. But it's actual spin at the equator as seen from outside is zero, that is why hurricanes do not form near the equator even though that is where it is the hottest. The spin increases as we move away from the equator and it increases faster as we get further from the equator due to the nature of a sphere. The decrease in circumference by latitude increases as we move to higher latitudes meaning that the earth has more spin the higher the latitude and thus hurricanes are drawn away from the equator.

THE ATLAS BARRIER

So, why did I name this posting "The Atlas Barrier" and what is the discovery in American geography that I claim to have made?

First of all, one curious fact about these barrier islands is that they are almost completely absent along the Atlantic coast of South America. The reason is a fact that is known already. The dust from north Africa that gets swept out to sea by the easterly winds there is a vital component in the formation of hurricanes over the ocean because it provides the condensation nuclei necessary for cloud formation.

If hurricanes form over the ocean and move westward because the earth rotates eastward then why do we not see similar extensive barrier islands along the coasts of China and Vietnam? The obvious answer is that there is no source of dust to the east there. In fact, there is no system of barrier islands anything like as extensive as those described above anywhere in the world.

One curious and unexplained fact of American geography is that there are very extensive barrier islands on the coasts of North Carolina and Florida but far fewer on the coast in between of Georgia and South Carolina.

Considering that dust from north Africa is necessary to the formation of the hurricanes that build these islands, I do not think it is a coincidence that the highest peaks of the Atlas Mountain range in Morocco is at about the same latitude and is of about the same length as the stretch of coast in South Carolina and Georgia that is relatively free of barrier islands.

Dust from north Africa carried out to sea north of what I will call "The Atlas Barrier" goes to form storms that will meet land at North Carolina or sometimes northward and dust carried out to sea from south of this barrier will go to form hurricanes that will strike Florida, the Gulf area or the Caribbean.

The Mystery Of The Wind

If you go past any tall smokestacks daily, you will notice that the air is very rarely still. It is almost always moving in one direction or another. Have you wondered why this is so? Why doesn't the air reach some state of equilibrium and then remain still? Why does it keep moving for millions of years without ever getting where it is going?

There is, of course, the night and day cycle. Air rises when the sun heats the ground during the day and then descends when it cools at night. This is most noticable near the seaside because since land is quicker to gain and shed heat than water is, we get a sea breeze by day and a land breeze by night.

The rotation of the earth is certainly a factor too. But yet there must be more to it than this. The earth always rotates in the same direction, eastward, and the configuration of land and sea on the earth remains the same. So then how do we explain why the wind direction continually shifts?

I think that I have a simple way of explaining it. The never-ending flow of wind is caused by the earth's tilt on it's axis. The total amount of energy that the earth receives over the course of a year remains the same. But due to the axial tilt, the distribution of that heat changes daily. The latitude on the earth's surface at which the sun is directly overhead moves between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn (23 1/2 degrees north and south of the equator) during the course of a year.

This means that we could consider the northern and southern hemisphere as two separate "heat hemispheres". Each hemisphere is continually either gaining or losing heat until the annual cycle begins again. Since air rises from where it is warm and descends where it is cold, this means that the atmosphere in each of the two "heat hemispheres" must continually redistribute itself to maintain equilibrium.

Compare it to a closed metal box. If we heat one half of the box and cool the other half, we will get what is known in meteorology as a "Hadley Cell" of air rising in one place, descending in another and, flowing back to the start. This is why there is higher winds at the earth's surface at night and in winter because it causes the air to descend. But if we suddenly change the areas of the box that are heated or cooled, we will get a much more complex flow of air within the box as it seeks an equilibrium.

This is the driving force behind the earth's winds aside from the daily cycle of heating and cooling and the earth's rotation. This means that wind would be at a minimum if there were no axial tilt and a maximum if the tilt were 45 degrees. We are just over the 50 per cent mark with a tilt of 23 1/2 degrees.

The Air Pressure Vector

Weather forecasting more than a few days ahead is difficult. The reason is obvious, we do not yet understand all of the complex factors involved in the weather.

I was watching the waves on the surface of some water and I realized something about the atmosphere that I have never seen documented. It revealed another factor in the formation of the weather.

The surface of a body of water is flat because it is held by gravity and a flat surface is the one requiring the least amount of energy to maintain. Gravity is stronger that the structural bonds within the water. There is also another factor, the air above the water is also held by gravity and presses down evenly on the water.

However, the situation changes when there is a breeze. I have determined that from the point of view of the water, the air pressure from above and the wind forms a vector. If there is no wind, the only component of the vector is the air pressure from above and the vector is a vertical line of 90 degrees, since the water and air are both held by the same gravity. The angle of the air vector pressing upon the surface of the water is determined by the speed of the wind. It is the angle of the air pressure vector that determines the formation of waves on the water.

A 90 degree air vector, which means no wind at all, will form no waves. An air pressure vector from almost straight up, a light breeze, will form small waves. The air pressure vector must be at an angle other than 90 degrees to produce waves and the lower the angle, the higher will be the waves. This is because the lower the vector angle, the less the wind force is opposed by the pressure from above and gravity.

Thus, in my description of wave formation here, faster wind produces higher waves not because of increased force but because of a lower air pressure vector angle. It is well-known that when the wind is at a speed of 22 kilometers per hour (13.785 miles per hour) or greater, whitecaps will form on waves. Boaters know this as a sign that the water is too rough to be out in a small boat.

I recognize this whitecap threshold as a sign that the pressure from the wind to the side is now equal to the air pressure from above. I have never seen this documented anywhere. Put simply, whitecaps form on waves when wind reaches a speed where it's pressure exceeds the air pressure caused by the weight of the air above so that the wind can force air into the water. Whitecaps form when our air pressure vector goes below 45 degrees, when the horizontal wind pressure exceeds the vertical air pressure.

We don't notice air pressure because it cancels out as it presses in all around us. But this is not true for water thrown into the air. When water turns white, it means that the air pressure on it is unequal and air is forced in at the higher pressure side. Air is not forced into the water in a lake because the pressure on it is equal.

The air in the water changes the way it refracts light, causing it to appear white. I notice at Niagara Falls that the water turns white as soon as it passes the brink of the falls. This is because the water is now falling, making the air pressure below it greater than the pressure above it and forcing air in from below.

Water usually gets into the air by the process of evaporation. Temperature is defined as the speed of movement of the atoms or molecules in a substance. Water at a certain temperature will actually have molecules moving at different speeds, the temperature of the water is the average of these speeds. Some of the faster-moving molecules will escape the water altogether into the air. Thus, evaporation causes the average speed of the molecules to drop and the temperature to decrease.

I have a new idea to add to the movement of water into the air. If the wind can push air into water, it can also push water into the air. When the wind is above the whitecap threshold and the air pressure vector is thus below 45 degrees, the wind can push water into the air without going through the usual evaporation process. Let's call wind above the whitecap threshold of 22 kph "super-pressure wind" because it can bypass the evaporation process and actually push water into the air, which can later fall as precipitation.

To verify that my hypothesis must be correct, let's consider evaporation. Few would doubt that water will evaporate faster from warm water than from cold water. This should logically mean that there would be far fewer storms in winter than there are in summer. Yet, that is not the case at all. There are many and powerful storms in winter when logic would seem to dictate that there should be much less water in the air.

How does all the water to form Buffalo's lake-effect snow evaporate from a cold lake? The answer is that it usually doesn't. But there are powerful winds in winter and my hypothesis here is that by means of the air pressure vector, winds above the whitecap threshold can push water into the air from a cold body of water (unless, of course, it is frozen) without going through the normal evaporation process.

The Wind Pressure Formula

In a posting on this blog, "The Air Pressure Vector", I pointed out that the fact that whitecaps form on waves when the wind speed reaches 22 kilometers per hour this means that wind at this speed must exert a force that is equal to the standard air pressure of 14 pounds per square inch or 9,863.6 kg per square meter.

In the weather report, wind is expressed as a velocity. But this does not tell how much force the wind exerts on an object.

Suppose you are building a sign and you are told that the sign must be able to withstand a wind of 35 kph. What exactly does this mean? It does not tell you how much force the wind will exert on your sign. There is the old Beaufort Scale of wind effects but this is just broken down into a scale of one to ten.

For an aircraft, this is not the case. Aircraft have both an air speed and a ground speed. The air speed is how fast the plane is being propelled by it's engines. The ground speed is how fast the aircraft is moving relative to the ground when the wind is factored in. For aircraft, the expression of wind is more useful in terms of velocity.

My proposal is that the conversion factors between velocity and force of the wind as revealed by the fact that whitecaps form at 22 kph (13.67 miles per hour) and standard atmospheric pressure is 10,356.78 kg/sq. meter (14.7 psi) should be kept handy. This will make it simple and easy to calculate the pressure that a wind of a given velocity will exert. Then, a sign or other structure can be pre-tested to withstand wind by putting it in a horizontal position and putting appropriate weights on it.

In estimating the pressure that wind will put on a structure, we should not try to be too accurate. The effect of wind on the base of a structure will depend on how it is mounted. If it is not perpendicular to the wind direction then trigonometric functions must be used. When a structure is based on the ground, the force of the wind on it is diminished somewhat by stationary air "piling up" against it and forming an invisible inclined plane along which the wind moves. It is well-known to fence builders that wind will just jump over a solid fence but will be broken up into eddies by one with pickets on alternating sides of the rails.

To calculate the wind pressure on a surface perpendicular to the wind direction, divide the speed of the wind in kph by 22, or miles per hour by 13.67. Then square the result and multiply it by the standard air pressure. To square a number, multiply it by itself. We must square the result of the division because we know that an object travelling twice as fast has twice the momentum and when dealing with a fluid, it will mean that the surface will be struck by twice as many atoms or molecules, thus increasing the force by a factor of two.

The Wave Pressure Hypothesis

I watched the waves on Lake Erie at Buffalo on one windy day. The wind was roughly from the west along the length of the lake and the waves were much higher than usual. Yet, I wondered why the waves in the lake never reached the magnitude of the waves in the oceans. This got me thinking and led me to a factor in wave formation in bodies of water that I had never seen documented before.

It is well-known that moving air has lower pressure than still air. This is why an airplane flies. It's wings are curved on the top and flat on the bottom. This shape is known as an airfoil. It means that, as the wing slices through the air, the air above the wing will have to travel faster than the air below the wing. Since the faster moving air above the wing exerts less pressure on the wing than the air below it, the airplane becomes airborne when the difference in pressure exceeds the weight of the plane.

In older cars, before the advent of fuel injection, carburetors operated by the same principle to mix fuel vapor with air flowing through the air filter. The incoming air flowed into a narrow tube called a venturi, which caused the pressure of the air to drop because it had to move faster in order to move the same volume of air through a narrower tube. This drop in pressure in the venturi pulled fuel vapor in to mix with the flowing air, which than went into the engine's cylinders.

This principle of faster-moving air exerting lower pressure is relied upon in transportation technology. Yet, I have never seen it referred to in earth science.

There are two forces holding the earth's bodies of water in place. The first, of course, is gravity. The second is the downward pressure from the atmosphere above the water. The earth's atmosphere exerts a pressure of approximately 14 pounds per square inch at sea level.

But what happens when the wind blows across the water? Using this airfoil or venturi principle, (take your pick which you want to call it) the pressure above the water should be lower than if the air was still, right? My hypothesis is that an important but overlooked factor in the formation of waves in the oceans is this principle.

If the wind is blowing over a stretch of ocean but the air above the water some distance away on either side of the wind is still, that would decrease the relative atmospheric pressure on the water below the wind. That would logically cause pressure on the water to "pile up" in the windy area. This "piling" would help the wind to "catch" the water and thus would create larger waves than if there were no differences in atmospheric pressure above the water.

We already know well that a decrease in atmospheric pressure in the middle of a tropical storm pulls up water. This is the so-called "storm surge", a term that residents of New Orleans will never forget. This hypothesis may explain the impressive waves of the Pacific Ocean. The Atlantic is more stormy, the word "pacific" actually means "peaceful". But the Pacific Ocean is much larger than the Atlantic and so has more variations in the atmospheric pressure above it. This makes it possible for areas around the Pacific, such as California, Hawaii and, Australia to be famous for their surfing.

The Waves Of Life Hypothesis

I have come to a startling conclusion that I have never heard of before. Any life on earth that is dependent on oxygen in the atmosphere is also dependent on the waves in the ocean. Let me explain why.

Not far from where I live, there is a tall smokestack that is visible for a great distance. There are also other factory smokestacks along my drive to and from work. One day, I realized something. The days when the air is perfectly still so that the smoke from these smokestacks rises straight up are very few and far between. In other words, the air is almost always moving hundreds of feet up, even if wind is not noticable on the surface.

This got me thinking. Water is a molecule, there is a chemical bond between the one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms making up a water molecule. Air, in contrast, is merely a mixture. There is no such thing as a molecule of air. It is a mix of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and, about 1% carbon dioxide, argon, etc. In times of high humidity on a warm day, the air may include several percent water vapor. Wet air is actually lighter than dry air, which is how a barometer can predict storms.

These component gases of the air have different weights. Carbon dioxide is the heaviest. Oxygen is just a little bit heavier than nitrogen. We do not notice this because air holds together except when occasionally carbon dioxide can become concentrated in low areas.

I realized that air, as a mixture, must be considerably less stable than it seems to us. There has never been a time in earth's history when the air was still for long. This is simply because the earth heats unevenly, causing weather. This constant turbulence has kept the components of air well-mixed and thus hid the instability that I believe air would have if it were still for an extended period of time.

Suppose a child got a jar and went through the kitchen mixing all kinds of things together in the jar. Now suppose the child put the jar aside for some time. The components would eventually settle by weight and stratify back into the components of the mix, with the heaviest on the bottom and the lightest on top. This stratification by weight would happen only if the mixture was not stirred. Stirring would keep the mixture intact.

I am convinced that this is what would happen to the air around the earth if it were not constantly "stirred" by weather. All kinds of atmospheric turbulence contribute to this stirring necessary to keep the air intact. Warm and cold fronts create wind and weather as do high and low pressure centers. On warm days, there is an updraft under those fluffy cumulus clouds and a downdraft between the clouds. In towering cumulonimbus clouds, the friction between updraft and downdraft is enough to create lightning.

Near the earth's surface, wind colliding with hills and mountains contributes greatly to keeping the air intact by "stirring". If the air were too still or even if it's surface were too smooth, the air would begin to come apart, to stratify into it's component gases. There is really nothing else holding it together.

Carbon dioxide, being the heaviest component, would settle to the surface. There would be luxuriant plant life, which takes in carbon dioxide, but no animal or human life either on the surface or in the water because the oxygen that plants produce would rise above the heavier carbon dioxide to it's own level.

Mountains and hills contribute a lot to stirring the air mixture when struck by wind and thus holding it together. However, the earth's surface is 72% water. Air over the smooth oceans may begin to come apart because there is no fixed objects like hills and mountains to stir it.

I realized that our existence is made secure by the waves in the oceans. Whenever wind crosses water, waves result. Water at sea level weighs eight hundred times as much as air. This means that the waves created by the wind cannot possibly move as fast as the wind that produced them. So, the following wind collides with the wave, creating turbulence as the airflow is directed upward along the surface of the wave, thus colliding with the air above it.

In fact, the shape of a wavy surfave seems especially designed to create turbulence when crossed by wind. And, of course, the cross-section of the wave is always perpendicular to the direction of the wind. Waves, in effect, act as temporary "hills" that emerge wherever there is wind over water to stir the air and thus keep it from separating by gravity into it's components.

This separation would not occur in a small, isolated sample of air because heat also contributes to the stirring. But on a planetary scale, I do not believe that heat would be enough without something to collide against to foster turbulence and thus, stirring. Mountains and hills are very helpful but the earth's surface is only 28% land.

Thus, I maintain that the existence of air, as we know it, is dependent on the fact that wind creates, and then collides with, waves in water. If the consistency of water were different so that this was not so, the air would begin to come apart and carbon dioxide would settle down to cover at least the lower areas of the surface.

New Insights Into Lightning

ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND LIGHTNING

The mechanisms behind lightning are still a mystery and I gave it some thought. Conventional wisdom is that currents of air brushing past each other as updrafts occur under towering cumulonimbus clouds and downdrafts adjacent to the cloud cause static electricity.

The problem with this scenario is that any physics class experiment to produce static electricity shows that it must be two different materials that are rubbed together to create static electricity. Static electricity can only be created by two different materials because when there is friction between the two materials, the one with the strongest hold on the electrons in it's outer electron shells will knock electrons out of the material with the weakest hold on the electrons in it's outer electron shells. The one with the weaker hold will become positively-charged and the other negatively-charged.

So, I ask how the static electricity that results in lightning can be caused by friction between air currents when in is two of the same material? Static electricity cannot be produced unless there is a significant difference in the hold the two materials have on the electrons in the outer electron shells of it's atoms.

The conclusion that I arrived at is that most of air actually is two different materials, about 78% of dry air is nitrogen and about 21% is oxygen. Both exist as diatomic molecules in the air. The two are next to each other in the periodic table of the elements. Nitrogen has an atomic number of 7, meaning that an uncharged nitrogen atom has 7 protons and electrons. Oxygen has an atomic number of 8. Nitrogen has 5 electrons in it's outer shell and oxygen has 6. This causes them to have different holds on electrons in the outer electron shells of atoms.

This means that the static electricity that causes lightning can be caused by friction between oxygen and nitrogen. This has got to be the basis of lightning. It exists only because there are two different major components of the atmosphere. If the atmosphere were all oxygen or all nitrogen, there would be no lightning and if it were half oxygen and half nitrogen, there would be more lightning than there is now. I cannot find that this has been documented anywhere.

We could actually describe lightning as a form of physical oxidation, as opposed to the chemical oxidation in burning and digestion. The opposing updrafts and downdrafts in the air occur under ordinary cumulus clouds as well but the friction produced there is not enough to dislodge the electrons to produce lightning. The atmospheres of other planets also must have at least two component gases to produce lightning, it can be detected on Venus and especially Jupiter.

THE DURATION OF THUNDER

It is known that static electricity can only come about when two different materials are rubbed together so that the material which has the stronger hold on the electrons in it's atoms' outer orbitals knock electrons out of the other material. My conclusion was that lightning is dependent upon the fact that most of air is composed of two different gases, nitrogen and oxygen.

Lightning is a vast electrical spark between two areas of potential voltage difference. Namely, an area that has acquired a positive charge and an adjacent area that has acquired a negative charge. Lightning strikes between a cloud and the ground or between two clouds. There is actually no such thing as "sheet lightning", which appears as a bolt of lightning illuminates the side of a cloud.

Anyone that has been in an electrical storm knows that there is a time gap between the flash of the lightning and the rumble of the resulting thunder. This is simply because light travels so much faster than sound. The exact speed of sound varies with altitude, temperature and humidity but generally, sound travels a kilometer in about three seconds or a mile in about five seconds while light is essentially instantaneous for our purposes here.

During a recent electrical storm, I noticed something that I have never seen referred to before. Here is a question to ponder: If the speed of the lightning bolt is essentially instantaneous from our perspective, then why does the rumble of the resulting thunder last for several seconds?

The length of the rumble of thunder relative to the speed of the lightning bolt cannot be due to cyclic expansion and contraction of the air in a shock wave because if that were the case, the sound of thunder would start loud and then get progressively quieter and that is usually not the case. There must be another reason for the long length of the sound of the thunder resulting from the nearly instantaneous flash of the lightning bolt.

My conclusion is that the reason the length of the rumble is so long is that it results not from the duration of the lightning bolt but from it's length.

When a lightning bolt strikes nearby, the shock wave in the air that we hear as thunder propagates outward. The shock wave from the part of the bolt closest to the ground, and thus closest to us, is what we hear first. Then, as the seconds go by, we hear the shock wave from those parts of the lightning bolt furthest from us, in other words closest to the cloud.

The length of the rumble that the listener will hear is proportional to the length of the bolt, as it creates thunder, divided by the distance from the observer to the bolt. This means that the closer the lightning strike, the longer the length of the thunder rumble is likely to be.

Another conclusion that I came to while listening to the thunder is that the reason the volume of the rumble is uneven, louder-quieter-louder, is that the path of fork lightning tends to be jagged and is rarely a straight line. This is because a current of electricity will follow the path of least resistance to it's destination.

The shock wave produced by the bolt when it is most nearly perpendicular to the observer will be the loudest and when it is at an angle, will be less loud. Another factor is that the thunder echoes off the ground.

Put simply, sound travels at a finite speed so we hear the thunder from the closest point of the bolt first and it's furthest point last. This explains why the bolt of lightning is close to instantaneous but the resulting rumble of thunder lasts several seconds.

Geology And Weather

The processes of weather are relatively simple yet it is so difficult to predict the weather even a a week in advance. The complexity of weather is not due to the processes of the weather itself but to the messiness of the earth's surface. The terrain of the earth; including obstacles, sources of water and uneven heating of the air affects it's density and movement.

One of the most obvious examples is that since land is quicker to both absorb and to lose heat than is water, there tends to be a sea breeze, from water to land, by day and a land breeze, from land to water, by night. The earth heats most in the tropics, causing air to rise and creating a low pressure center, while the opposite occurs in the arctic. The spin of the earth directs the prevailing winds.

Simple logic tells us that high pressure centers should form over land and low pressure centers over water for the simple reason that wet air is lighter than dry air. Likewise, high pressure should form over and snow and grass and low pressure over desert and asphalt because these surfaces absorb more heat and thus cause the air to rise. All of this is well understood.

Yet, the weather remains so difficult to forecast more than a week or so in advance. This can only mean that there must yet be factors at work that we do not understand. Much of the weather revolves around those high and low pressure centers that form. But why do they form? We cannot yet really explain why a high pressure center forms in one place and a low in another, producing the winds that flow between them.

I would like to introduce a new factor into the formation of the weather, in particular these high and low pressure centers. This new factor unvolves subterranean geology. If you wonder how much effect the underground geology of the earth might have on the weather up in the sky, the answer could be plenty.

We know that sea level across the world does not form a perfect sphere as it would seem it should. There is actually considerable variation in sea level due to gravity, although this variation is very difficult to detect from the earth's surface. This variation is due to the differing density of underlying layers of rock and the resulting non-uniformity of the earth's gravitational pull.

I got to thinking, if variations in the earth's gravity from place to place can affect sea level, why would it not also affect the density of the air from one place to another? This is not just about the unevenness of the earth's surface but about the density of the subterranean rock layers. This has got to be a factor in the weather.

We tend to think of being "up in the air" as being free of gravity. At sea level water is 800 times as heavy as air but, air is bound to the earth by gravity just as is the water in the oceans. If it were not, it would have escaped into space long ago. In fact, the air forms a kind of "ocean" around the earth just as the water does and if water is so clearly affected by gravity isn't it logical that the air is affected in a similar way?

The formation of high and low pressure centers can be explained, in part, by the "piling up" of air in areas of stronger gravity at the expense of areas with weaker gravity. A clear example of this is the so-called Canadian Shield, the heavy granitic rock that underlies the eastern half of Canada. This has got to be a factor in the high pressure centers that come down from the north across the eastern U.S. Across the globe, air piles up or becomes sparse due to underlying gravity and is guided along by the spin of the earth.

Biology

The rest of this blog is about biology

The Real Alphabet

I would like to introduce my theory of languages. I have arrived at an explanation of how languages operate that I cannot see anywhere else.

We know that many thousands of different molecules can be put together from a relatively few atoms. Any molecule can be deconstructed into it's component atoms. But those atoms cannot be broken down any further, at least not by chemical means.

So, what on earth does this have to do with language? The fact is that language operates in exactly the same way as atoms and molecules and the "atoms" of language are what I refer to as the "Real Alphabet". This alphabet has nothing to do with that which we use to spell out words.

All of the information that we get about the world around us comes to us through our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and, smell. Language is what we use to describe the information that we have received with our senses.

Words are strung together to describe things. But at it's most fundamental level, language has a set of things that we cannot describe with words, but must be experienced to be understood or else described indirectly. It is this set of fundamentals that I have named the "Sense Elements", they are congruent to the atoms which combine to form molecules.

A Sense Element is simply a fundamental piece of information that we receive with one of our five senses. Since these pieces of information are fundamental, it is not possible to describe them directly with words. A Sense Element must be experienced to be understood, or at least described indirectly by comparison and contrast.

Since language is what we use to convey information, and all of the information that we obtain comes by way of our senses, these Sense Elements must be congruent to the atoms in molecules. Since no Sense Element can be described with words directly, but can only be experienced, language must exist to expand our information by linking Sense Elements with which we are not familiar to those with which we are.

As an example, try describing your favorite (favourite) color (colour) to someone who could either not see, or could only see in black and white. It is impossible, the words just do not exist. That is because this is a Sense Element. It is one of the building blocks of words, and thus it cannot be described by words.

This also means, of course, that we cannot be absolutely sure that we all interpret colour (color) in the same way. The same goes for all other sensory input.

As another example, suppose you went past a lilac bush and wanted to describe it's scent. Once again, it is not possible to describe it directly. The words just do not exist. The best that can be done is to describe it indirectly by comparison and contrast.

In the same way, there is just no way to directly describe sound or taste. It can only be described by comparison and contrast with something else. That is because these are Sense Elements and are actually the building blocks of all language.

Words and language are intended to be a substitute for actual experience. But any description using words must span more than one Sense Element. A description links Sense Elements that the reader is not familiar with to those he is familiar with.

Someone who is good with words can describe a ride in an airplane (aeroplane) or skydiving or underwater diving to someone who has never experienced these things. That is because none of these are Sense Elements, but are composed of a multitude of Sense Elements.

Language is not "absolute" in it's description of reality. Rather, it is a matter of perspective. We see the world and universe as we do not only because of what it is, but because of what we are. On my cosmology blog, I showed how this explains why we perceive such things as time and the speed of light which are otherwise unexplainable.

Language is the same way. We do not have an "absolute" view of the world, we see it through our senses, and this gives us a perspective view.

Language must rest on a foundation and this foundation is the Sense Elements. No one sense element can be described with words. But words do link those elements with which the reader is familiar to those with which he is not. We do not see reality as it absolutely is, but as it is conveyed to us through our senses.

Think of it this way: A description or an explanation is the use of words to support entities in reality. But there are certain entities at the most fundamental level of any language where there are no words below them to support them. Therefore these fundamental entities cannot be described using words.

These are what I am referring to as the Sense Elements and they are the real alphabet of any and all human language.

The Collective Radiation Exposure

I saw an announcement of a celebrity look-alike contest, and an idea began to develop in my mind.

Our appearance is determined primarily by our genes. Racial differences, particularly skin tone, are mainly from exposure to the sun, but the sun does not otherwise have a great effect on our genes. We can see that people with dark skin do not look any more different from one another than do people with light skin.

The sunlight to which we are exposed is highly directional. In contrast, cosmic rays bombard us in roughly equal amounts from all directions in space. Except for racial differences, especially the skin, variations in what we could call our "non-racial form" come about from changes in the genes brought about by these penetrating cosmic rays.

Minor differences in appearance are also caused by large-scale inbreeding. Whenever there is any type of boundary; whether physical, political, religious or, linguistic, it becomes more likely that anyone on one side of the boundary will most likely marry someone on the same side of the boundary. Over long periods of time, this tends to cause people on each side of the boundary to develop different random physical features.

For most of the time that human beings have lived on earth, there have been relatively few people. This has changed only very recently, relatively-speaking. The introduction of potatoes from the new world was one of the factors that made possible a major increase in the population of Europe. There were around one billion (thousand million) people in the world in 1850, now there is seven times as many. There were certainly few people in pre-historic times, before civilization and agriculture. It is believed that there were maybe two hundred million people in the world around the time of Christ.

The concept of the "Collective Radiation Exposure" that I have arrived at is that this is the total potentially gene-altering cosmic rays that humans, as a whole, have ever been exposed to. This exposure only makes a long-term difference during the time before the people have finished having children.

If we make a graph of the increase in human population from the beginning of human beings until now, it will be easy to see how humans, as a whole, have been exposed to only a small fraction of the cosmic radiation that can alter genes that we would have been if the population had increased at a steady rate from the beginning to the present polulation. This is simply because human population increased very slowly until it underwent a sharp increase, and multiplied many times, in relatively recent times due to advances in medicine and a reliable food supply. About one in every nine people that have ever lived are alive today.

If the human population had increased at a steady rate to what it is today, humans would have been collectively exposed to many times the amount of radiation, and people would now look much more different from one another than they do. Humans have been exposed to so little gene-altering radiation, in comparison with how many people there are in the world today. The result is that many people look like other people, and we can have celebrity look-alike contests.

Genes are finite, and do not have unlimited potential for variation. There is a certain maximum range of genetic variation, regardless of the Collective Radiation Exposure. This principle affects all living species, not just humans, and facilitates adaptation.

Just imagine all human beings as a vast collective antenna, receiving the cosmic rays which continuously bombard us from all directions in space, and which can penetrate and alter our genes and cause random variations in our appearance.

Pterosaurs And Tropical Islands

Here is one of those questions of the ages that does not appear to have been answered but if we give it some thought, the answer becomes clear.

There are many tropical islands in the world with all manner of lush vegetation on them. But how did the plants get there in the first place? How did all of this plant life arrive at a speck of an island, in the middle of the ocean, thousands of km away from any other land?

The tectonic splitting apart of the continents explains why there are plants on all of the continents, except Antarctica. But this does not explain how plants got to remote islands that are volcanic in origin, or atolls formed from coral building up on extinct volcanoes below the surface.

The way I see it, there is really only one sensible answer.

In the days of dinosaurs there were flying creatures, called pterosaurs, that had wingspans like that of aircraft and could fly for thousands of km. I will not get into the debate here as to whether pterosaurs should be classified as dinosaurs, or whether they should properly be referred to as pterodactyls. There is a very good article about pterosaurs on www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaurs .

Pterosaurs were herbivores, or plant-eaters. Imagine a pterosaur eating it's fill of plants and then flying far out over the ocean. The pterosaur sees an island and makes a stop. Meanwhile, the seeds of the plants that the pterosaur had dined on were proceeding through the pterosaur's digestive system, and end up on the island.

This is how animals on land eat plants, and their fruit, and spread the seeds of the plant around. How else could plants have gotten to remote islands? Then once the island is covered in plants, it becomes a source of food in itself.

This scenario tells us that these creatures must have been able to fly very far, and had good vision. They must have had a good sense of direction, and possibly some type of navigation system. Pterosaurs must have been more intelligent than dinosaur-era creatures are typically made out to be.

Inhabiting these remote islands would keep pterosaurs, their offspring and their eggs, safe from land-based predators like T-rex. There must have been a close connection between pterosaurs and tropical islands. 

The Vital Role of Grass

Here is another example of the cooperation between plants, to go along with that explained in "Plants And Light".

Grass has a vital, and very under-appreciated, role in optimizing conditions for other plants. Like humans and animals, plants are complex enough to have a temperature, or fairly narrow range of temperatures, at which they operate best. The most important part of the plant is the roots, which absorb nutrients and water from the ground. There must be an ideal temperature at which this is accomplished with peak efficiency.

Grass is like a blanket in that it moderates the soil temperature by holding onto a layer of air. This keeps the roots of larger plants at a fairly constant temperature throughout the 24-hour daily cycle of day and night. Grass acts in the same way as hair or fur in that it shades to restrain sudden heating upon sunrise, and insulates by holding onto a layer of air to prevent quick cooling after sunset.

Notice in areas of desert how quickly heat is gained early in the day, and how quickly the heat is lost at night. These extreme daily temperature changes would be destructive to the operation of most plants, and grass serves an essential role in moderating this.

Smaller plants, with roots that do not go as deep, would obviously be the most affected by daily temperature swings. But even trees, with much deeper roots, are assisted by the long grass which usually sorrounds them.

These plants, in turn, help the grass to grow around them by providing shade. Unlike larger plants, grass tends to grow better in the shade because it hinders the evaporation of the water that it needs.

But what about the grass itself? My belief is that the advantage that grass has is it's biological simplicity. Obviously, grass requires water just like other plants and that water must be available just below the surface of the soil. But it's simplicity makes it inherently less vulnerable to swings of temperature than it would be if it's operation was more complex. Thus, grass is suitable to cooperate with other plants by moderating the soil temperature for them.

Life Without The Moon

The moon has had a significant role in life on earth. The most obvious is that it serves as a calendar for planting and other agricultural activities as it goes through it's phases during the 29-day cycle. Aside from that, the gravity moon no doubt helps to keep the rotation of the earth more stable than it would be otherwise. Also, I have speculated in the posting "The Moon And Earth's Magnetic Field" on my physics and astronomy blog, www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com , that the moon's gravity strengthens the magnetic field of the earth by churning it's iron core, thus helping to protect us from charged particles from space.

No planet, other than Pluto, has a moon so large in ratio to the planet as the earth and the moon. I think that I established in the posting "The Earth, The Moon And, The Sun", on the physics and astronomy blog, that the moon does not actually orbit the earth. Rather, the paths of the two interweave while both orbit the sun. This means that the moon really isn't even a moon, the earth and the moon are actually double planets.

My reason for coming to this conclusion is that from the moon, the gravity of the sun is more than twice as strong as that of the earth, so how could the moon orbit the earth, rather than the sun? "The Continental Asteroid Hypothesis" on my geology blog, www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com , gives my explanation for the origin of the moon.

I do not see why there should be surprise about the recent findings that indicate the presence of both ice and metals on the moon. If meteors and comets can strike the earth, then they can land on the moon also.

The question about water on the moon is not whether there was ever water there, a comet or a portion of one could have easily deposited ice on the moon. The question is whether the weak gravity of the moon, about one-sixth that of earth, could retain water. The answer for liquid water would be no, but ice or underground water from the impact of a comet could definitely still be present today, especially in the polar regions of the moon which are out of direct sunlight.

There have been very many meteorite impacts on earth ( It is a meteor before it lands, and a meteorite after it lands). But the impact craters are gradually erased by erosion. Also, since the surface of the earth is about 72% water we can assume that percentage of impacts have occurred there. Minerals on earth, such as metals, came from meteorite impacts and the water on earth seems virtually certain to have come from the impacts of one or more comets, which are basically collections of ice.

The same side of the moon always faces earth. This near side has the "seas" that we can see, but which are actually volcanic lava (See "The Lunar Balance Hypothesis" on my physics and astronomy blog for my explanation). However, the far side of the moon has many more craters than the near side.

The obvious reason is the presence of the earth, many meteors that would have hit the near side of the moon hit the earth instead. This gives us a good idea of how many meteors have hit the earth, but whose craters have since been erased by erosion or which have landed in the oceans.

The giant planet Jupiter serves as an excellent protective shield for the earth. In the past twenty years, two major comets have struck Jupiter, producing spectacular fireworks, that might have struck the earth. But there is a down side to Jupiter's position, it's powerful gravity prevents the asteroid belt from coalescing into a planet (See "The Mars Gap Hypothesis" on my physics and astronomy blog).

The gravity of Jupiter also destabilizes the orbits of these asteroids around the sun and causes them to fall inward. I am sure that the two small moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are asteroids whose orbits were destabilized and which drifted toward Mars until they were captured by it's gravity. Many of these asteroids whose orbits were destabilized end up striking the earth or the moon.

One such impact, on what is now Mexico's Yucutan Peninsula, resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago. Clearly these impacts can have a tremendous effect on the earth's environment. There was the impact of what was most likely a small comet in 1908 in Siberia which felled vast number of trees (You can see "Tunguska Event" on www.wikipedia.org, if you wish).

I think that I established in "The Lunar Shield Zone Hypothesis" on my geology blog, www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com , that the earth would be richer in metals if not for the presence of the moon, because meteors carrying metals have struck the moon instead of the earth. But the question that I would like to ask today is whether there would be higher forms of life on earth at all without the moon to shield the earth. The shock waves of frequent asteroid impacts in water could wipe out most forms of life there and the extinction of the dinosaurs has clearly shown that such impacts can also wipe out life on land.

We know that the moon was once much closer to the earth than it is now, possibly only one-fifth as distant. The moon gradually moves further away due to the tidal bulge that it's gravity creates in the earth's oceans. Since the earth is rotating, this pulls the tidal bulge continuously forward and this imparts orbital energy to the moon, pulling it into a higher orbit.

The force that creates these tides is not simply gravity, but rather a difference in gravity. As the moon is overhead, the water at the surface of the ocean is closer to the moon than the water at the bottom of the ocean. Thus, there is more gravitational pull at the surface so that water is pulled upward by the moon's gravity.

If the moon can produce the tides in the earth's oceans that it does today, just imagine what the tides must have been like if the moon was only one-fifth as distant from earth. It's gravitational force on the oceans would have been 125 times as great.

This is because first, the gravitational pull is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Also, with the moon at only one-fifth the distance from earth, the difference in distance between the surface and bottom of the ocean would be five times as great relative to the distance to the moon. So 5 squared is 25, and then that multiplied by 5 gives us 125. The tidal force can thus be said to operate by an inverse cube law, just as gravity operates by the inverse square law.

The influence of tides on the earth was also greater in those days of long-ago because it is known that the earth was rotating faster, so that days were shorter, than it is now. It is actually this same tidal force which has slowed the earth's rotation.

The earth must have been a far more amphibious world then than it is now. Coastlines were much less well-defined. There were wide tidal zones, maybe several kilometers wide, between the lines of high and low tides. There would be many permanent tidal pools in areas near the coast. The tides would have had much more impact on shorelines than they do today.

Now, here is something that I cannot see has been referred to previously. We know that life began in the oceans, and later moved onto land. The tremendous tides of the distant past must have been an important factor in bringing life from the sea onto land. Living things were continuously washed onto land by the extreme tides.

I am still certain that this would have required God's design, as I described on my creation blog, http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ . It was necessary for life to get started in water because the fragile early forms of life required protection from UV. But the requirements for breathing, mobility, structural support and, reproduction are completely different on land than in water.

The Bone To Flesh Ratio

I have a new concept in the development of life on earth. I have named it "The Bone To Flesh Ratio". My new concept predicts the average physical size of species that depend on bone for structure; mammals, humans, reptiles and, bony fishes.

Millions of years ago, the average size of these creatures was much greater than today due to the existence of dinosaurs and giant sea creatures. The age of mammals did not begin until dinosaurs were gone. My hypothesis predicts that in the distant future, bone-based creatures will get smaller still.

The reason is simple. When a creature dies, it's body decays and the component atoms return to the biosphere to become part of plants and other creatures.

But in creatures that depend on bone for structure, there is a catch. The bone is composed of different atoms than the flesh, such as calcium and phosphorus. When the creature dies, the flesh decomposes and it's atoms return to the biosphere in a short time. But the creature's bones do not. Bones, or even the complete skeleton can remain intact for many thousands of years.

So, bone matter does not return to circulation in the biosphere at anything like the same rate as flesh. Furthermore, the fact that bone remains intact for so long means that it may become so deeply buried that it never returns to circulation in the biosphere. This means that as time goes on, more and more bone matter is being removed from circulation in the biosphere relative to flesh matter. In other words, the bone to flesh ratio gets ever lower.

This is why the physical size of the average species dependent on bone today is much smaller than it was a hundred million years ago, according to my hypothesis. Dinosaurs are what bone-based life would be like if there was unlimited bone matter available. Size would be an evolutionary survival advantage in being bigger than one's competitors.

The dinosaurs existed for maybe a couple of hundred million years age before going extinct around sixty-five million years ago. During this long era of the dinosaurs, a vast amount of bone matter was removed from circulation in the biosphere. Larger bones have a lower surface area in relation to volume and so would decay even slower than smaller bones.

I would like to give an excellent example of the bone to flesh ratio by considering life in the sea. My observation is that life in the sea is also limited in size but it is due to another factor. Unlike on land, bone material in the sea is plentiful but the size of fish is limited by the availability of oxygen. Fish process oxygen through their gills but water can hold only a limited amount of dissolved oxygen. There is no oxygen limit to size on land and no bone limit to size in the sea because bone material dissolves and recirculates to the biosphere.

This, then is my observation in the limits set to how big creatures can grow; the availability of oxygen sets the limit in the water and the availability of bone matter sets the limit on land. Smaller fish have a greater surface to volume ratio.

Now let's consider whales, which are by far the largest creatures on earth. The Bone to Flesh ratio explains how the whale attains it's size. The whale gets the best of both worlds by living in the sea for the abundant bone material but coming to the surface to breathe air like creatures on land. the whale is not a fish but a mammal with lungs instead of gills.