Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak.   It is important to understand the atmospheric science fundamentals in order to follow the greenhouse effect in trapping the extra infrared heat radiation responsible for climate change, and for appreciating the planet’s extreme weather response.

For example, there is a middle school text with a hands-on experiment described by the Biological Science Curriculum Studies (BSCS) in Colorado Springs, called “cooking water” that I suggest might be an appropriate eye opener, if necessary, to prepare you for climate science. You start with 4 ice cubes in a pan over a constant source of heat. Check the time for the ice to melt, continue to get the time for the water to begin to boil, then measure the time for the water to boil away. These times are a measure of the amount of energy to melt the ice, heat the water from freezing to boiling, and the energy required to evaporate the water. If you’re a frowned-upon cook, you will stir the pot with a thermometer. The experiment is not terribly accurate: you’ve ignored the heat lost or gained from the kitchen, but you’ll find the ice melt time is slightly less than the time required to heat the water and at least 5 times the time required to evaporate the water. (79 calories/gm and 539 calories/gm) The temperature also does not exceed about 194 oF while the water boils (you’re not at sea level any more!), and the temperature remains at 32 oF until the ice melts. Now we understand the evidence of that extra trapped energy in the Arctic, and that the ice melt evidence is additional to the general global temperature increase. (Now you also know why Florida farmers spray water on their oranges and vegetables in preparation for a cold front and why my Iowa mother left a tub of water in the cellar with the jars of tomatoes in winter.)

If you believe Einstein, you get all the energy back when the water condenses and freezes. You can appreciate how the water cycle transports much of the equatorial heat to the Arctic and Temperate zones, and you can understand that the heat the extra CO2 greenhouse effect is storing in the oceans, as well as a tremendous amount of energy, is being stored in the atmosphere with the extra evaporation. The folks in Texas and Louisiana know about this extra precipitation and hail formation and Kansas and Oklahoma get the extra wind energy.

Those supercells described on the weather channel grow as that humid air in the southerly wind from the Gulf is lifted into the atmosphere by ground heating. The energy released in condensation warms that parcel of air which is then buoyed further upward and continues to use that extra reservoir of moisture in the south wind from the Gulf to produce cloud condensation in the high, cooler levels of the atmosphere. This process continues until there is an anvil cloud of ice crystals against the stratosphere. And if at that altitude there is a cold dry westerly wind that is twisting the cloud just a bit, we begin to form a tornado.

Now consider this Einstein thought experiment. A pendulum is supported from the North Star. As the bob moves across the North Pole, an observer to the south might worry that he is in the direct path. But the Earth rotates his position to the east and the pendulum appears to our observer to be deflected to the right of the expected path (the Coriolis Effect). As that real pressure difference force in the atmosphere tries to make the wind blow from high to low pressure, the earth rotation makes it appear that there is an extra Coriolis force that deflects the wind to the right. That works at the Earth’s surface in the northern hemisphere, making the winds blow counterclockwise around the low pressure center. I leave the situation in the southern hemisphere for you. You will also understand why hurricanes do not form on the equator.

This circulation continues up through the atmosphere. The horizontal pressure difference between the top of the cold air mass and the warm tropical air does the same to form the Jet Stream, which is most intense at the altitude of commercial jets just below the tropopause, the boundary between troposphere and stratosphere, at about 40,000ft. The jet stream is important for affecting the wind speed of high altitude aircraft, first realized for B-29s in the Pacific. Reid Bryson, instructor for air corps cadets at the University of Chicago in 1944, was credited with first forecasting this for the B-29s from Guam. (He became Department Chair for Meteorology at Wisconsin, where Channel 7 meteorologist Mike Nelson studied. Bryson was instructor for both of us.) Finally, we understand the elaborate attention paid to the jet stream on the TV weather charts. This makes an easy identification of the positions of the cold polar air mass intrusions, and of the surface storm tracks along the frontal boundary between the cold and warm air masses.