Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/443

Rh case air flows from the center in both directions towards the cold ends of the canal in the upper levels, and from the cold ends towards the middle in the lower levels. In this figure we have therefore a general description of the primary motion of the air on the earth taken as a whole, by which the air flows from the tropics towards the north pole and the south pole of the earth, respectively, in the upper levels, and from the north pole towards the tropics and from the south pole towards the tropics in the lower levels. It should be remarked in passing that since the assumed canal is like a rectangular square box in our laboratory experiments, but as a matter of fact of a wedge shape in the earth's atmosphere, the circulation is not so easy as might be at first assumed. The meridians at the equator, which are one degree apart, converge to a point at the poles, so that the atmosphere when quiescent must be thought of as made up of a series of sectors or spherical wedges. Now the air in running from the tropics towards the poles runs from a broad end to a thin end of the wedge, and, since it can not congest, a very complex circulation is set up in order to enable it to escape unnatural compression. There are, however, many examples in the earth's atmosphere of masses of air which are arranged much more nearly in the form of a rectangular box canal, as shown when a long mass of cold air is pointing north and south, with a mass of warm air pointing from south to north and lying east of it, while another mass of cold air pointing from north to south is placed just east of the mass of warm air. While these masses may not in fact be very rectangular, yet we can study their action on the supposition that sections through them produce figures which are practically rectangular in shape. Suppose we have a warm mass lying between the cold masses, then the warm mass will be higher above and also lower below than the cold masses so far as their isobars are concerned. That is to say, at the upper surface of the sections if you want to get a mass of air at a certain density it will be necessary to go higher up in the atmosphere over the warm mass than over either of the undisturbed cold masses lying on the side, and furthermore, if one wants to get a mass of air of the same density as that lying on the under side of the cold section, it will be necessary to go down lower in the warmer mass, that is, nearer the surface of the ground, in order to find it. Applying now our principles of circulation, the action of gravity will tend to draw the upper part of the warm mass over upon the cold masses to either side, and thus tend to destroy the inequality in the elevation of the upper isobar. Similarly the cold masses will tend to flow under the warm mass from either side, and remove the discontinuity in the positions of the lower isobars. Not only do these masses of warm and cold air tend to overflow and underflow sidewise, but they seek to move, as it were, along the meridians, northward and southward at the same time; hence the long currents