How We Know Meteorology is Pretending To Understand Storms episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 31, 2019 · 18 MIN

How We Know Meteorology is Pretending To Understand Storms

from Solving Tornadoes: Physics of Storms and Flow · host James McGinn

Superstition and half-baked theory dominate the atmospheric sciences. Currently meteorological theories on atmospheric flow and storms maintain three superstitious and half-baked notions: 1) Convection. This is the superstition that evaporation makes air buoyant enough to power strong updrafts in the atmosphere (included in this is the strange belief that H2O in the atmosphere becomes gaseous at temperatures/pressures that have never been detected in a laboratory); 2) Dry layer capping. This is a superstition that imagines dry layers having structural properties that explain the how/why convection does not constantly produce storms and uplift; 3) Latent heat.  This is the superstition that phase changes from a gaseous phase of H2O (which are purported to exist despite never having been detected and being inconsistent with what is indicated in the H2O phase table) to a liquid phase releases "latent heat" which itself has never been confirmed/verified. This was recorded 11/16/2019, or thereabouts.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Dec 31, 2019

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