Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
the atmosphere.
The scale of size of the atmosphere is incredible. The
imagination can only boggle at something weighing so
much that can, and frequently does when the Moon dictates,
move so fast. There is no sea tide remotely like it.
On a hot afternoon, the atmosphere picks up water
from the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 5.5 billion tons an
hour, hoists it up and carries it northeast by the millions of
tons, to release it later as rain over New York and southern
New England. A single, small, fluffy cloud may hold from
100 to 1,000 tons of moisture. A summer thunderstorm
may unleash as much energy in its short life as a dozen
Hiroshima-style bombs, and 45,000 thunderstorms are
brewed around the Earth every day. Yet one hurricane releases
almost as much energy in one second.
The very size of the atmosphere offers protection or
shielding, between the Earth’s surface and space. Without
the shielding of the atmosphere, life could not continue on
Earth; and without the atmosphere life could not have developed
on Earth, at least in the form in which we know it.
It is known, for example, that the Sun emits high - energy
radiations - ultraviolet and X rays - and that even more energetic
radiations - cosmic rays, pervade space; and these
radiations would kill living things.
We know that they enter the atmosphere in lethal
amounts but are stopped long before reaching the surface.
The absorption by the atmosphere of these powerful forms
of radiation accounts for many of the properties, particularly
electrical, of the higher atmosphere.
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