Wednesday 30 April 2014

Fly a helicopter to the top of Mt Everest in summer

Author : Wiki Watcher

Fly a helicopter to the top of Mt Everest in summer (July) and lower a large drum of very salty water (heated to near boiling point and opened at the top) onto the surface at the start of a nice sunny day – as it would be above the clouds up there. We will assume there is enough salt to lower the freezing point to -10°C. In July, the warmest month, the average summit temperature is -19°C. Will the water freeze? Yes. So how good is the Sun at raising ocean temperatures below the clouds with all its direct radiation? How absurd is it to imagine that the 1cm thin transparent surface layer of the oceans is warmed to 15°C by direct solar radiation? How absurd then are all the models which use ocean emissivity in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations and expect to get the temperature due to absorption?

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