The Causes of Temperature (Geophysics)

[Chad]

Useful link:

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-software-earth-atmosphere-d-splendor.html

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

In defence of my position that the thickness of the atmosphere appears to be the deciding factor in determining the planetary temperature differential, I appeal not just to Venus (thank you Tilo) but also to the planet Uranus.

Uranus is the one planet in the Solar System with an axis that fails to align itself, more or less, parallel to the solar axis. In fact, its axis is more or less perpendicular. This means that winter and summer on Uranus as as extreme as can be conceived. It would be impossible for the twin hemispheres of any conceivable world to have a greater differential between its summers and winters.

As conventional theory has it, Earth's two hemispheres grow warmer when each in turn tips toward the sun to receive its light ever-so-slightly more directly; each grows colder in turn when it tips away from the sun, recieving its light ever-so-slightly less directly. Of course, Earth doesn't really "tip" at all---it is already tipped--but this tip alters its orientation ever-so-slightly as it orbits around the sun.

But Uranus is tipped all the way over. This means that, for half its orbit of 84 years, each hemisphere and each pole is directly bathed in sunlight then plunges into total darkness for 42 years at a time. The equator, by contrast, is directly exposed to the sun only for the briefest period and even then, only for eight and a half hours out of its 17 hour rotation.

And yet, would you believe it but, the weather on Uranus is pretty well just like the Earth, and even more like the other Gas Giants.

The off-kilter tilt should mean that temperatures at one pole would be higher than at the equator, and significantly higher than at the dark pole. The higher temperatures should drive the planet's weather, as the rising warm air travels to the other pole and falls.

But weather on Uranus functions much as it does on other gas giants. Like Jupiter and Saturn, the planet has bands of zones and belts that orbit parallel to the equator, which is warmer than the poles.
-- What is the Temperature of Uranus

Uranus is still warmest at its equator, where centrifugal forces cause the planet's atmosphere to bulge and thicken. Why is this so? The above source offers this guess:

The warm temperatures that drive the planet's weather come from the interior of the planet, rather than from the sun. The significant distance to Uranus from the sun may play a role in why the planet's interior heat overpowers the faint light from the star.

However, other authorities disagree.

What is very interesting about Uranus is that the planet has an enormous 98 degree tilt on its axis. Basically, it is laying on its side with the poles receiving the direct sunlight. This makes for extreme seasons and when the Sun rises at one of the poles, that pole will receive direct sunlight for 42 years. Therefore seasonal variations are immense, in that as the dark side of the planet comes out of its 40 plus year slumber, the frozen atmosphere heats up dramatically causing violent storms. Curiously though, Uranus is still warmer at its equator than the poles, even though the poles receive the direct sunlight with a very low sun angle over the equatorial region. It is not well understood why.
-- Uranus, National Weather Service

Of course, the reason it's not well understood is because the standard model of temperature variation is blinding observers to the rather obvious truth; Uranus is confusing only because scientists are convinced that temperature varies due to the angular change in sunlight incidence. Eliminate this presumption and the phenomenon speaks for itself.

Atmospheric temperature on Uranus is a function of atmospheric depth.

We need only reapply this paradigm to earth and we discover universal consistency.

[Ishmael]

Earth's Internal Heating.

New Research Suggests Earth's Mantle Might Be Hotter Than Anyone Expected

[Ishmael]

I need to find a map of the Earth that shows where diurnal temperature change is greatest and where it is smallest!

Can anyone help track down this data?

[Ishmael]

"Diurnal Temperature Variation"

[Ishmael]

err... I actually think I found it.



Funny that hot spot in Antarctica.

[Mick Harper]

An AE event just occurred i.e. subject to careful ignoral and world record syndrome

1. Britain has been put in lockdown for a calendar month (May, 2020) for the first time in recorded history
2. We have just had our sunniest (though not warmest) May in recorded history.

Aye, kids have gone back to school and it's clouding over nicely.

[Boreades]

[Ishmael]

HIPERBOREA: PART ONE

I'm afraid I must tell you that I have suffered a major breakthrough in this area (Global temperature), and in several related areas.

It all struck me last night when, out of nowhere, I recalled "The Wallace and Weber lines."

The Wallace and Weber Lines are "imaginary dividers used to mark the difference between species found in Australia and Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia." South of the line you have marsupials. North of the line, you don't.

Now the oddest thing about this line is that it simply makes no sense at all. There is no natural feature at the place the line occurs that should prevent the crossing over of any species from one side to the other. The Wallace line slices through the north-west side of the Indonesian island chain; the Weber line through the south-east side: Each line demarcating the regions populated by a different assembly of life forms. However; I have long been more familiar with the generalized rendering of these lines, which simply runs a stroke right down the middle of Indonesia, and this strikes me as a fair representation of what is going on (and it is this stroke through Indonesia which I held in my mind's eye last night).

So I ask you indulge me in imagining this line as a somewhat randomly placed border-demarcation splitting the Indonesian archipelago in two. Marsupials to one side; non-marsupials to the other.

I have long been bothered by that line given, as I have said, that it makes little sense geographically. Why do the various types of animals stick to their respective sides?

What occurred to me last night is that they do not. Marsupials are not at all impeded from heading north and the non-marsupials are not at all impeded from heading south. Indeed; they are in the process of doing so; for the line is not a border at all.

It is a front.

The Wallace and Weber Lines represent the current status of an invasion in-progress.

The Marsupials are doomed. It is but a matter of time. The non-marsupials (help me with the scientific classification) have conquered the entire planet and will soon take all of it. Australia is the last redoubt of a once protected ecology that is protected no more.

There is no natural barrier now but, for Marsupials to have survived so long as they have, there must have been such a barrier at one time---and that barrier must have only recently (in ecological terms) been eliminated, else the Marsupials would have disappeared before we humans had the opportunity to document them.

Moreover; the fact that those two epochal events have overlapped suggests the timing of human civilization and the busting of the ecological barrier formerly protecting the marsupials are likely related.

But no. It was not the arrival of people that broke it.

The first question to answer: What was the nature of the barrier?

The clue---the one that prompted my breakthrough last night---is the location of Australia: The southern hemisphere. Indeed; Australia is the only continent located exclusively in the southern hemisphere.

Shall anyone dare venture a guess then at the nature of the barrier that both protected the marsupials and corralled human civilization?

[Pete Jones]

"non-marsupials" are "placentals," I believe.

[Ishmael]

Thanks!

[Ishmael]

HIPERBOREA: PART ONE (Continued)

Now the nature of a barrier deserves some consideration in itself. As presented in the previous section, a barrier protects and separates distinct ecologies, enabling the continued survival of at least one of the ecologies, which would not survive if invaded by the other.

But a barrier is more than that.

A barrier is what enables the evolution of at least one of these ecologies in the first place---or, at least, a barrier is what enables separate evolutionary paths.

Without a barrier, there can be no isolation of either ecology from the influence of the whole. The whole must then evolve and change together as a collective. With a barrier, one or both ecologies is free to change in isolation without the pressure of the whole ecology potentially holding changes in check.

The barrier then is necessary to enable marsupials and placentals to evolve from a common ancestor, to enable marsupials to evolve from placentals, or (what I judge to be most probable) to enable placentals to evolve from marsupials.

We can then draw a major conclusion regarding the nature of the barrier we are looking for; given that evolution requires eons of time, whatever barrier it was that long protected marsupials from the present invasion, it must have existed also throughout all the time required for this evolutionary process. Without the barrier existing for a very long time indeed; placentals could not have evolved separately. The barrier we are looking for must therefore have existed so long as to have constituted a practically permanent feature of the Earth as it once was.

So. We now know:

1. The barrier was impervious to the life-forms in question.
   
2. The barrier only recently collapsed
   
3. The barrier existed for eons

[Chad]

[Ishmael]