Hurricanes can serve as toy models for understanding how forests can move atmospheric water. The precipitation mass sink is underexplored—why is its scientific discussion discouraged?
Fascinating analysis on precipitation as a pressure control mechanism. The Milton data where 33mm/hr rainfall matched the 84mb/day pressure drop is incredibly compelling evidence.What really clicked for me was the vertical adjustment concept where precipitation creates an upward pull filling the pressure deficit aloft. Most frameworks ignore mass sink dynamics entirely but this shows why intensifcation rates basically track rainfall. The institutional pushback despite positive reviewer feedback is frustrating tho.
Hello Anastassia, Another incredible post, part of which goes over my head, but it does elucidate the difficulty of getting new science accepted. Here is a pet theory I had a couple years ago, but I didn't have anyone to check it with. Is there merit in this idea, or should I discard it?
Hurricanes and typhoons as one of Earth’s cooling mechanisms.
My understanding is that one of planet Earth’s biggest cooling mechanisms is precipitation. Precipitation causes a big release of energy into the atmosphere (the energy it took to evaporate it or transpire it). Much of this heat is radiated out to space, cooling the planet. Hurricanes and typhoon dump huge amounts of rain. Thus they must release huge amounts of heat which radiates off planet. If so, we could consider big storms and torrential rains as methods the Earth has for cooling herself. I am sure there are science mechanisms at work here, but this is a simple way to put it. Until humans start regreening the Earth to cool the Earth, Nature may continue to scale up big storms.
Thank you, Michael. With this cooling problem, an important point is what happens with the air after condensation has occurred and latent heat has been released. It must stay aloft long enough for the heat to ultimately be radiated to space. We mentioned this problem briefly in our 2003 Frontiers paper, in section 2.3. Dependence of global transpirational cooling on atmospheric circulation
"A large hawk came to our balcony—in a very urban city, St. Petersburg—and gave us the pleasure of observing it for several hours. (Just how often do hawks visit urban balconies?)"
Looks like a buteo — a family of heavy raptors that are known for "still hunting" rather than hunting from the air.
I don't know Russian birds, but I would not be surprised that a buteo like the Red-Tailed Hawk found in North America would enjoy hunting from a balcony railing!
As for your "adventures" with scientific publishing, keep in mind the struggles of J. Harlen Bretz, who struggled for decades to find acceptance for his now-accepted theory that a series of massive floods carved much of southwest Washington State. He did this through constant, steady logic — much like what seems to be your approach!
"I must admit that I have a tendency to dramatize things. When someone says that my work is not good, I feel it very strongly—often in a theatrical way."
It sounds like you have a handle on it! Avoid like the plague the approach of Ignaz Semmelweis, who fought to get physicians to simply wash their hands between patients, which he clearly showed saved many lives. But he resorted to calling dissenting physicians "murderers" and eventually was dumped into an asylum, where he died of sepsis — the very thing he was trying to prevent.
I would say it was probably Accipiter nisus. To tell the truth, we had a bird feeder on our balcony, so the hawk was apparently attracted by the many small birds around. We also have a small house for starlings, and they sing in spring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8_4rtv_rWs
Regarding Ignaz Semmelweis, his path appears to have been one of martyrdom, to which the advice that “he should have been more prudent” simply does not apply. Sometimes there is no real choice but to feel strongly and to speak accordingly. Few people possess the inner strength required to endure the consequences of that stance.
Well done. Masochism may not be the best word for your tenacity and perseverance, gumption and grit. Staying steady in the wheelhouse while atmospheric pressures drop and stormy weather strengthens is commendable and is what it takes to progress against wind, waves and tides. Cleary your gaze is more fixed on the distant desired horizon than on the precipice. Bravo!
HI Anastasia, if one were to look at the difference in intensity between the land fall precipitation and ocean based precipitation of the two main precipitation masses i.e. convective storms vs hurricanes could this help with the biotic pump theory,? as the two would have different condensation points either salt driven or flora driven. The notion that salt has a very positive coalescent coefficient leading to broad based rain out within the system compared to precipitation and ice nucleation over land is generally negative but leads to the same height in cloud top but more localized rain out, this does show the effect of differing precipitation pathways as a result of biological influence. As far as I see it, in a flat world model there would be static precipitation patterns then topography would offer the first level of disruption and nucleation points would offer the next. All models conclude that latent heat is the driver of the system and so the ability to effect the release point should be of primary importance.
Thank you, Theodore. These are important and complicated issues. From my perspective, what matters is the spatial distribution of rainfall, whether it is localized or distributed. I hope to discuss this at some point in future posts. But this would be more a function of the presence of trees, I think, not biogenic aerosols per se.
My personal view is that the biogenic aerosols primarily serve the function of generating light non-precipitating clouds with the primary goal of temperature control, not moisture transport.
I would have thought the notion of the vertical temperature gradient which can be altered through biogenic particles like ice nucleating particles would have the ability to change height of condensation therefore help draw more surface wind which one would assume would have the highest moisture content and therefore the greatest effect through temperature and condensation compression. To drop cold water or ice down from a great height effectively introduces the upper atmosphere cold down to the surface layer which no other mechanism that I know can. This is how I would assume it would effect moisture transport in different ways. The presence of trees is then as you rightly point out one source of biogenic nucleating particles. The difference then between high positive temperature coalescence of salt which does not alter the temperature of the interaction as much for condensation and other biogenic particles which have different condensation points would then be of primary importance in regards to temperature transfer and therefore intensity of the ongoing interaction.
As someone who doesn't have to articulate and validate my observations of natural processes I can bypass all the academic politics and publication pressures and focus on the evidence that is visible and seems to repeat at scale from microclimate to macro structural repetition. Spherical shape repeats and scales from the atomic to the planetary and likewise biologic and atmospheric drivers have a propensity towards scale replication.
Temperature difference is the thermodynamic driver of both precipitation and evaporation. The torus doughnut torque and twist of the cyclone/hurricane vortex and the central vacuum must therefore draw down cold from space and the stratosphere increasing thermodynamic differentiation and accelerating precipitation as the principle of angular momentum and centrifugal force energize the pump.
I thought all this was settled science.
I can't believe the level of institutional, and individual, resistance to change in Academia. Except that I can of course, as the rationalist politics seek legitimacy in a scientific framework that is monolithic and morally bankable, rather than an apolitical movement, and amoral cultural segment driven by curiosity and the desire to discover rather than monetise, or politicised, scientism.
Thank you, John, for this allegory. I cannot claim any insider knowledge on those questions, but from my appreciation of the level of understanding in the scientific community, I don't tend to think any military advancements in weather modification are real. Also, the project StormFury comes into mind.
We have had chemtrails overhead in Austin for at least 30 years, not contrails, which fade away behind the plane, but chemtrails, which remain and often disperse visibly across the sky.
Like many of your readers, I am still trying to get my head around the physics of hurricanes! However, two (simple) questions: (1) What would be the likely condensation nuclei in your sucking bottle experiment? I have been lead to believe that water vapor cannot condense without a nucleus, so what would have been the nuclei in your bottle? (2) You state (fairly early on) that "Surface air pressure is simply the weight of the atmospheric column above us" - is that not true only for still air? Would not some of the falling pressure you describe also be due to the Bernoulli effect of fast moving air having a lower pressure? I am sorry that I do not have time to calculate how much this might be, in relation to the pressure changes you describe - but then you could "run the numbers" in seconds, whereas it would take me a couple of hours to refresh my memory and get all the units correct etc. etc. I also need to try to understand that, if you are correct, that precipitation is an important cause of these pressure losses, then what relevance does that have for the Small (or Terrestrial) Water Cycle?
As regards condensation nuclei, I suppose that if you do not work in an ultra-clean space, there is enough condensation nuclei everywhere. And even under such super clean conditions, water vapour condensation will start anyway if the vapour becomes too much oversaturated / the system too much metastable. I suppose that condensation nuclei formation is a statistical process that is slow without external nuclei, however, it has a non-zero rate even under absolutely pure conditions and I suppose that the thermodynamic disequilibrium speeds it up.
So I would say that your questions listed under point (2) seem to be much more interesting than those under point (1).
You may be interested to know that the point you raised about hydrostatic equilibrium is exactly the same as that raised by one of the reviewers. You can read those comments and our reply in full at https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14717v3 — see Appendix A. For convenience, I repeat part of our response here:
"With respect to precipitation drag and non-hydrostatic effects, we agree that strong local vertical accelerations can occur in heavily precipitating regions. However, these effects represent small departures from hydrostatic balance when considering the vertically integrated column mass. Hydrometeors typically fall close to their terminal velocity, such that the drag they exert approximately balances their weight, and non-hydrostatic contributions do not materially affect the surface pressure diagnosed from column-integrated mass."
By way of comparison, the mass of the Moon matters a great deal if we are concerned with ocean tides, but not when we calculate how a stone falls from a tower. Climate models were hydrostatic for a long time; later, non-hydrostatic formulations were introduced, and since then non-hydrostaticity has often been invoked in discussions—sometimes with reason, sometimes without—adding confusion.
In tropical cyclones we are talking about pressure drops on the order of one hundred millibars, roughly one tenth of the atmospheric weight. If the atmosphere were non-hydrostatic on such a scale, the compensating vertical velocities would have to exceed 100 m s⁻¹.
Regarding your Bernoulli argument, it is the pressure drop that makes the air move, not vice versa. When one observes accelerating air in a narrowing tube, this is caused either by an externally imposed pressure difference between the tube ends and/or by subsequent tube widening and pressure recovery. Without an externally imposed pressure difference along the streamline, there will be no air motion. Thus, the key question for us is how the pressure difference arises that sets air into motion in the first place.
Thanks Anastassia. All these terms that you are very familiar with and we have to struggle to make sense of, and to get a feeling for what they mean and how they interact. This discussion (and your more recent one on Climate modelling) remind me of the importance of accuracy in these models. Being complex, non-linear systems, they fall under Chaos Theory and so any small inaccuracy, either in the data, but especially in the equations, can have enormous effects when extrapolated out through twenty or more iterations. I suppose my Bernoulli question might apply to a small pressure difference here caused by air movement - that was caused by a larger pressure difference either side of my little Bernoulli cell. You are looking at the bigger causes.
Fascinating analysis on precipitation as a pressure control mechanism. The Milton data where 33mm/hr rainfall matched the 84mb/day pressure drop is incredibly compelling evidence.What really clicked for me was the vertical adjustment concept where precipitation creates an upward pull filling the pressure deficit aloft. Most frameworks ignore mass sink dynamics entirely but this shows why intensifcation rates basically track rainfall. The institutional pushback despite positive reviewer feedback is frustrating tho.
Hello Anastassia, Another incredible post, part of which goes over my head, but it does elucidate the difficulty of getting new science accepted. Here is a pet theory I had a couple years ago, but I didn't have anyone to check it with. Is there merit in this idea, or should I discard it?
Hurricanes and typhoons as one of Earth’s cooling mechanisms.
My understanding is that one of planet Earth’s biggest cooling mechanisms is precipitation. Precipitation causes a big release of energy into the atmosphere (the energy it took to evaporate it or transpire it). Much of this heat is radiated out to space, cooling the planet. Hurricanes and typhoon dump huge amounts of rain. Thus they must release huge amounts of heat which radiates off planet. If so, we could consider big storms and torrential rains as methods the Earth has for cooling herself. I am sure there are science mechanisms at work here, but this is a simple way to put it. Until humans start regreening the Earth to cool the Earth, Nature may continue to scale up big storms.
Thank you, Michael. With this cooling problem, an important point is what happens with the air after condensation has occurred and latent heat has been released. It must stay aloft long enough for the heat to ultimately be radiated to space. We mentioned this problem briefly in our 2003 Frontiers paper, in section 2.3. Dependence of global transpirational cooling on atmospheric circulation
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191/full
and I hope to get back to this in the near future.
"A large hawk came to our balcony—in a very urban city, St. Petersburg—and gave us the pleasure of observing it for several hours. (Just how often do hawks visit urban balconies?)"
Looks like a buteo — a family of heavy raptors that are known for "still hunting" rather than hunting from the air.
I don't know Russian birds, but I would not be surprised that a buteo like the Red-Tailed Hawk found in North America would enjoy hunting from a balcony railing!
As for your "adventures" with scientific publishing, keep in mind the struggles of J. Harlen Bretz, who struggled for decades to find acceptance for his now-accepted theory that a series of massive floods carved much of southwest Washington State. He did this through constant, steady logic — much like what seems to be your approach!
"I must admit that I have a tendency to dramatize things. When someone says that my work is not good, I feel it very strongly—often in a theatrical way."
It sounds like you have a handle on it! Avoid like the plague the approach of Ignaz Semmelweis, who fought to get physicians to simply wash their hands between patients, which he clearly showed saved many lives. But he resorted to calling dissenting physicians "murderers" and eventually was dumped into an asylum, where he died of sepsis — the very thing he was trying to prevent.
Keep up the good work!
I would say it was probably Accipiter nisus. To tell the truth, we had a bird feeder on our balcony, so the hawk was apparently attracted by the many small birds around. We also have a small house for starlings, and they sing in spring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8_4rtv_rWs
Regarding Ignaz Semmelweis, his path appears to have been one of martyrdom, to which the advice that “he should have been more prudent” simply does not apply. Sometimes there is no real choice but to feel strongly and to speak accordingly. Few people possess the inner strength required to endure the consequences of that stance.
"I would say it was probably Accipiter nisus."
Good call!
I couldn't estimate its size well from the photo. A buteo would be much larger.
Our "sparrow haws" often hover like a hummingbird while hunting, so having one still on a railing was a treat!
Well done. Masochism may not be the best word for your tenacity and perseverance, gumption and grit. Staying steady in the wheelhouse while atmospheric pressures drop and stormy weather strengthens is commendable and is what it takes to progress against wind, waves and tides. Cleary your gaze is more fixed on the distant desired horizon than on the precipice. Bravo!
Thank you for your support, Rob!
HI Anastasia, if one were to look at the difference in intensity between the land fall precipitation and ocean based precipitation of the two main precipitation masses i.e. convective storms vs hurricanes could this help with the biotic pump theory,? as the two would have different condensation points either salt driven or flora driven. The notion that salt has a very positive coalescent coefficient leading to broad based rain out within the system compared to precipitation and ice nucleation over land is generally negative but leads to the same height in cloud top but more localized rain out, this does show the effect of differing precipitation pathways as a result of biological influence. As far as I see it, in a flat world model there would be static precipitation patterns then topography would offer the first level of disruption and nucleation points would offer the next. All models conclude that latent heat is the driver of the system and so the ability to effect the release point should be of primary importance.
Thank you, Theodore. These are important and complicated issues. From my perspective, what matters is the spatial distribution of rainfall, whether it is localized or distributed. I hope to discuss this at some point in future posts. But this would be more a function of the presence of trees, I think, not biogenic aerosols per se.
My personal view is that the biogenic aerosols primarily serve the function of generating light non-precipitating clouds with the primary goal of temperature control, not moisture transport.
I would have thought the notion of the vertical temperature gradient which can be altered through biogenic particles like ice nucleating particles would have the ability to change height of condensation therefore help draw more surface wind which one would assume would have the highest moisture content and therefore the greatest effect through temperature and condensation compression. To drop cold water or ice down from a great height effectively introduces the upper atmosphere cold down to the surface layer which no other mechanism that I know can. This is how I would assume it would effect moisture transport in different ways. The presence of trees is then as you rightly point out one source of biogenic nucleating particles. The difference then between high positive temperature coalescence of salt which does not alter the temperature of the interaction as much for condensation and other biogenic particles which have different condensation points would then be of primary importance in regards to temperature transfer and therefore intensity of the ongoing interaction.
As someone who doesn't have to articulate and validate my observations of natural processes I can bypass all the academic politics and publication pressures and focus on the evidence that is visible and seems to repeat at scale from microclimate to macro structural repetition. Spherical shape repeats and scales from the atomic to the planetary and likewise biologic and atmospheric drivers have a propensity towards scale replication.
Temperature difference is the thermodynamic driver of both precipitation and evaporation. The torus doughnut torque and twist of the cyclone/hurricane vortex and the central vacuum must therefore draw down cold from space and the stratosphere increasing thermodynamic differentiation and accelerating precipitation as the principle of angular momentum and centrifugal force energize the pump.
I thought all this was settled science.
I can't believe the level of institutional, and individual, resistance to change in Academia. Except that I can of course, as the rationalist politics seek legitimacy in a scientific framework that is monolithic and morally bankable, rather than an apolitical movement, and amoral cultural segment driven by curiosity and the desire to discover rather than monetise, or politicised, scientism.
The problem is that it has gargantuan implications for basic understanding of the entire atmospheric circulation.
I've been missing your inputs. You are so right.
But I do have a plan how to move it forward step by step.
The hawk symbolizes war, no?
Perhaps your work is getting into physical relationships that the military would prefer not to be public.
The US Air Force published a 1996 research paper, "Weather as a Force Multiplier, Owning the Weather in 2025" https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA333462#
It is widely assumed that Russian and Chinese militaries conduct parallel work.
Thank you, John, for this allegory. I cannot claim any insider knowledge on those questions, but from my appreciation of the level of understanding in the scientific community, I don't tend to think any military advancements in weather modification are real. Also, the project StormFury comes into mind.
We have had chemtrails overhead in Austin for at least 30 years, not contrails, which fade away behind the plane, but chemtrails, which remain and often disperse visibly across the sky.
The image at this chemtrail-debunking site is of chemtrails, which they claim to be contrails. https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/Contrails
You will easily note the difference. Perhaps you do not have these over Russia.
They are both to evaluate wind movements ataltitude and to modify albedo.
Like many of your readers, I am still trying to get my head around the physics of hurricanes! However, two (simple) questions: (1) What would be the likely condensation nuclei in your sucking bottle experiment? I have been lead to believe that water vapor cannot condense without a nucleus, so what would have been the nuclei in your bottle? (2) You state (fairly early on) that "Surface air pressure is simply the weight of the atmospheric column above us" - is that not true only for still air? Would not some of the falling pressure you describe also be due to the Bernoulli effect of fast moving air having a lower pressure? I am sorry that I do not have time to calculate how much this might be, in relation to the pressure changes you describe - but then you could "run the numbers" in seconds, whereas it would take me a couple of hours to refresh my memory and get all the units correct etc. etc. I also need to try to understand that, if you are correct, that precipitation is an important cause of these pressure losses, then what relevance does that have for the Small (or Terrestrial) Water Cycle?
Hallo Bruce,
As regards condensation nuclei, I suppose that if you do not work in an ultra-clean space, there is enough condensation nuclei everywhere. And even under such super clean conditions, water vapour condensation will start anyway if the vapour becomes too much oversaturated / the system too much metastable. I suppose that condensation nuclei formation is a statistical process that is slow without external nuclei, however, it has a non-zero rate even under absolutely pure conditions and I suppose that the thermodynamic disequilibrium speeds it up.
So I would say that your questions listed under point (2) seem to be much more interesting than those under point (1).
Greetings
Tomáš
Hello Bruce,
You may be interested to know that the point you raised about hydrostatic equilibrium is exactly the same as that raised by one of the reviewers. You can read those comments and our reply in full at https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14717v3 — see Appendix A. For convenience, I repeat part of our response here:
"With respect to precipitation drag and non-hydrostatic effects, we agree that strong local vertical accelerations can occur in heavily precipitating regions. However, these effects represent small departures from hydrostatic balance when considering the vertically integrated column mass. Hydrometeors typically fall close to their terminal velocity, such that the drag they exert approximately balances their weight, and non-hydrostatic contributions do not materially affect the surface pressure diagnosed from column-integrated mass."
By way of comparison, the mass of the Moon matters a great deal if we are concerned with ocean tides, but not when we calculate how a stone falls from a tower. Climate models were hydrostatic for a long time; later, non-hydrostatic formulations were introduced, and since then non-hydrostaticity has often been invoked in discussions—sometimes with reason, sometimes without—adding confusion.
In tropical cyclones we are talking about pressure drops on the order of one hundred millibars, roughly one tenth of the atmospheric weight. If the atmosphere were non-hydrostatic on such a scale, the compensating vertical velocities would have to exceed 100 m s⁻¹.
Regarding your Bernoulli argument, it is the pressure drop that makes the air move, not vice versa. When one observes accelerating air in a narrowing tube, this is caused either by an externally imposed pressure difference between the tube ends and/or by subsequent tube widening and pressure recovery. Without an externally imposed pressure difference along the streamline, there will be no air motion. Thus, the key question for us is how the pressure difference arises that sets air into motion in the first place.
Thanks Anastassia. All these terms that you are very familiar with and we have to struggle to make sense of, and to get a feeling for what they mean and how they interact. This discussion (and your more recent one on Climate modelling) remind me of the importance of accuracy in these models. Being complex, non-linear systems, they fall under Chaos Theory and so any small inaccuracy, either in the data, but especially in the equations, can have enormous effects when extrapolated out through twenty or more iterations. I suppose my Bernoulli question might apply to a small pressure difference here caused by air movement - that was caused by a larger pressure difference either side of my little Bernoulli cell. You are looking at the bigger causes.