Monday, April 11, 2016
The Secret of "Micro Weather"; The Unstudied Phenomena of "Microformation"
Micro Weather; How does the weather work at micro levels, is still not yet understood. We simply do not need to know, these things are not essential to us, so we generally don't care to think about them. This is not climate though. At tiny levels, or scales, there can be various chemicals floating around in the air. It is truly neat studying how temperature affects the formation of ice crystals. Yet there is still another aspect to ice or snow formation which is still cloaked in mystery. How about those chemicals? How exactly can they, or other particulates, influence how weather works? Usually, when talking about snow, or rain, we think about "dust" as being the nucleation point of the crystal, or drop. However, there can be many various chemicals that can be released into the air. These can become snow, such that the snow is not made of pure water (well, it probably isn't in the first place, at least not in cities). There are a mind boggling amount of variations when it comes to kinds of chemicals. When these chemicals freeze, they can actually "manipulate" the ice forming process, producing a design which is different from that of water by itself. This is due to the many variations of molecular structures which exist in these chemicals, and how, under temperature and pressure, can reorder themselves. One of the most common examples would be that of aerosols. Also, chemicals have the ability to change the PH of water vapor. Once a water droplet begins its journey to becoming an ice crystal, and uses chemical molecules as it nucleation point, then the results are, well, not well studied. Perhaps the molecule will start to vaporize or create a reaction with the water. As a result, we might theoretically increase or decrease the melting or freezing point of water itself. So someday...well, (given that we can pollute the environment enough), we may see snow in 50 degree weather for instance.
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