The Philosophy of the Weather. And a Guide to Its ChangesButler, T. B. (Thomas Belden)
Science
The Philosophy of the Weather. And a Guide to Its Changes
Butler, T. B. (Thomas Belden)
Weather; Weather forecasting
It is not only not so, then, that the surface of the ocean is materially
warmer under the belt of rains than the adjoining surface under the
trades, especially on the summer side, but if it were so, the trades would
not be created thereby, any more than upon the Gulf Stream. And the
opposite is true of the land where the line of calms, and rains, and
drought meet, all around the globe. The fact assumed is therefore untrue.
The hottest surfaces, even at the rainless portion, where there is no
vortex, no storm, and no wind but the continual uniform N. E. horizontal
trade-wind, _never_ created, by reason of the heat alone, a mile of wind,
a storm or shower.
But, again, the belt of calms, where the air is supposed to rise and
create a suction which draws the trades on either side a distance of from
one thousand to two thousand miles, an average of three thousand miles in
all, at least, is not itself, on an average, over five hundred miles in
breadth from north to south. What a wonder of meteorology is here!
With a breadth of five hundred miles, the rising of the atmosphere is
supposed to be so rapid and of such immense volume that it draws the
surface atmosphere, one thousand to fifteen hundred miles on one side and
two thousand on the other, with a uniform steady velocity of twenty miles
per hour. Is this vast suction found by the unlucky mariner who may be
drawn within the vortex? _Not at all._ He finds no rapid suction there,
but _horizontal currents_, not steady, indeed, like the trades, and
sometimes calms _at the center_, but still the _currents are there_, and,
_except near the center, there as squalls, showers, and baffling winds
and as monsoons_.
Again, is there at the mouth of this vortex, or as you approach it, an
increased rapidity in the trade corresponding to the magnitude of its
influence? Does the trade become a hurricane as it approaches the spot
where it is to supply the place of that which has suddenly "expanded by
heat, and been forced to rise, boil over, and run off at the top in turn?"
Not at all. It blows gently, even up to the very line of the rainy belt,
and becomes squally and baffling, falls gradually calm near the center, or
changes to a monsoon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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