Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/311

Rh is the ultimate step in the formation of cloud. The cloud consists, like fog, of extremely small particles, so light that they float indefinitely in the air; rain and snow represent those particles that have grown to be too large and heavy to be any longer sustained by the air&mdash;that is to say, their rate of fall through the air is greater than the ascending component of the air in which they float. The process by which larger drops are formed out of the lighter particles that constitute a cloud has not yet been satisfactorily explained. It is probable that either one of several processes contributes to bring about this result, and that in some cases all of these conspire together. The following paragraphs represent the hypotheses that have marked the gradual progress of our knowledge:—

A. Cloud particles may be driven together by the motions imparted to them by the wind, and may thus mechanically unite into larger ones, which, as they descend more rapidly, overtake the smaller ones and grow into rain-drops.

B. The particles on the upper boundary of a cloud may at nighttime, or in the shade, cool more decidedly than their neighbours below them, either by radiation or by mixture; then the air in their immediate vicinity becomes correspondingly cold, the particles and their envelopes of cold air sink more rapidly, overtaking, and therefore uniting, with other particles until the large rain-drops are formed.

C. Some cloud particles may be supposed to be electrified positively and others negatively, causing them to attract each other and run together into larger ones, or, again, some may be neutral and others charged, which may also bring about attraction and union.

D. When any violent agitation of the air, such as the sound waves due to thunder, or cannonading, or other explosions, sets the particles in motion, they may be driven together until brought into contact, and united into larger drops.

E. The air&mdash;or, properly speaking, the vapour—between cloudy particles—that is to say, within fog or cloud, is generally in a state of supersaturation; but if it is steadily rising to higher altitudes, thereby expanding and cooling, the supersaturation must increase steadily until it reaches a degree at which the molecular strain gives way, and a sudden violent condensation takes place, in which process both the vapour and the cloud particles within a comparatively large sphere are instantaneously gathered into a large drop. The electricity that may be developed in this process may give rise to the lightning flash, instead of the reverse process described in the preceding paragraphs (C and D).

F. However plausible the preceding five hypotheses have seemed to be, it must be confessed that no one has ever yet observed precipitation actually formed by these processes. The laborious observations of C. T. R. Wilson of Cambridge, England, probably give us our first correct idea as to the molecular processes involved in the formation of rain. After having followed up the methods inaugurated by Aitken showing that the particles of dust floating in the air, no matter of what they may be composed, become by preference the nuclei upon which the moisture begins to condense when air is cooled by expansion. Wilson then showed that in absolutely dustless air, having therefore no nuclei to facilitate condensation, the latter could only occur when the air is cooled to a much greater extent than in the case of the presence of dust; in fact, dustless air requires to be expanded more than dusty air in the ratio of 4 to 3, or times more. The amount of this larger expansion may vary somewhat with the temperature, the moisture and the gases. More remarkable still, he showed that dustless air, having no visible or probable nuclei, acquired such nuclei when a beam of ultra-violet light, or of the röntgen rays, or the uranium radiation, or of ordinary sunlight (which possibly contains all of these radiations), was allowed to pass through the moist air in his experimental tube. In other words, these rays produce a change in the mixed gas and vapour similar to the formation of nuclei, and condensation of aqueous vapour takes place upon these invisible nuclei as readily as upon the visible dust nuclei. Further, the presence of certain metals within the experimental tube also produces nuclei; but the amount of expansion, and therefore of cooling, required to produce condensation upon these metallic nuclei is rather larger than in the case of dust nuclei. The nuclei thrown into the experimental tube by the discharge of electricity from a pointed metal wire produced very dense fogs by means of expansions slightly exceeding those required for ordinary dust. Finally, Wilson has been able to show that when dust particles are electrified negatively their tendency to condense vapour upon themselves as nuclei is much greater than when they are electrified positively, and he suggests that the descent of the rain-drops to the ground, carrying negative electricity from the atmosphere to the earth, may perhaps explain the negative charge of the earth and the positive electricity of the atmosphere.

At this point we come into contact with the views developed by J. J. Thomson as to the nature of electricity and the presence of negative and positive nuclei in the atmosphere. According to him, “The molecules made up of what chemists call atoms must be still further subdivided, and the atoms must be conceived as made up of corpuscles; the mass of a corpuscle is the same as the mass of the negative ion in a gas at low pressure. In the normal atom this assemblage of corpuscles forms a system which is electrical and neutral. Though the individual corpuscles behave like negative ions yet when they are assembled in a neutral atom the negative effect is balanced by something which causes the space through which the corpuscles are spread to act as if it had a charge of positive electricity equal in amount to the sum of the negative charges on the corpuscles. I regard electrification of a gas as due to the splitting up of some of the atoms of the gas, resulting in the detachment of a corpuscle from such atoms. The detached corpuscles behave like negative ions, each carrying a constant negative charge which we shall call the unit charge, while the part of the atom left behind behaves like a positive ion with the units positively charged but with a mass that is large compared with that of the negative ion. In a case of the ionization of the gas by röntgen or uranium rays, the evidence seems to be in favour of the view that not more than one corpuscle can be detached from any one atom. Now the ions by virtue of their negative charges act as nuclei around which drops of water condense when moist dust-free gas is suddenly expanded C. T. R. Wilson has shown that it requires a considerably greater expansion to produce a cloud in dust-free air on positive ions than on negative ones, when the ions are produced by röntgen rays.” It would therefore appear that the moist atmosphere above us may, through the action of sunlight or the lightning flash as well as by other means, become ionized. The negative ions attract moisture to themselves more readily than the positive; they grow to be larger drops, and descending to the earth with their negative charges give it negative electricity, while the atmosphere is left essentially either positive or neutral. (See also .)

Under this title have been included all possible, plausible or imaginary relations between the earth's atmosphere and interplanetary space or the heavenly bodies. The diffusion to and fro at the outer limit of the atmosphere, the bombardment by ions from the sun, the explanation of auroral lights and of magnetic storms, the influence of shooting stars and comet tails, the relation of the zodiacal light and the Gegenschein to the atmosphere, the parallelisms between terrestrial phenomena and the variations of the solar spots and protuberances, the origin of long or short climatic periods, the cause of special widespread cold days, the existence of lunar or solar gravitation tides analogous to oceanic tides, the influence of slow changes in the earth's orbit or the earth's axis of rotation—all are grouped under cosmical meteorology.

But, in the writer’s judgment these matters, while curious and interesting, have no appreciable bearing on the current important questions of atmospheric mechanics. There seem to be many widespread delusions and mistakes in regard to these problems, analogous to the popular errors in regard to astrology, and it is hardly necessary to do more than allude to them here. The leading meteorologists have relegated such questions to the care of theoretical astronomers and physicists until our knowledge is more firmly established. Undoubtedly the earth does come under other influences than that of the radiation from the sun; but in the present stage of dynamic meteorology we consider only this latter, and, assuming it to be constant as regards quantity and quality, we find the variable selective absorptions and reflections within our own atmosphere, and its complex internal mechanism afford us a bewildering maze of problems such that so long as these are unsolved it would be folly to spend time on those.

During the latter half of the 19th century the prosecution of work in meteorology gradually passed out of the hands of individuals into the control of large national organizations. This was the natural result of the discovery that, by the spread of the electric telegraph and ocean cables, it had become possible to compile daily weather-maps for large portions of the globe and make predictions of the weather and the storms for a day or two in advance, of sufficient accuracy to be of the greatest importance to the material interests of civilized nations. The development of wireless telegraphy since 1900 has even made it possible for isolated ships at sea to exchange weather telegrams, compile daily maps and study surrounding storms. One by one every civilized nation has established either a weather bureau or a meteorological office, or a bureau of hydrography and marine meteorology, or an elaborate establishment for aerial explorations according as its special interests demanded. These governmental bureaus usually pursue both Climatology and theoretical meteorology in addition to their daily practical