Explain why runners on a clear, windless, summer afternoon may experience air temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) at their feet and only 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) at their waist
ANSWER: An appropriate answer would be that as the Sun rises in the morning, sunlight warms the ground, and the ground warms the air in contact with it by conduction. However, air is such a poor heat conductor that this process only takes place within a few centimeters of the ground. As the Sun rises higher in the sky, the air in contact with the ground becomes even warmer, and there exists a thermal boundary separating the hot surface air from the slightly cooler air above. Given their random motion, some air molecules will cross this boundary: The "hot" molecules below bring greater kinetic energy to the cooler air; the cool molecules above bring a deficit of energy to the hot, surface air. However, on a windless day, this form of heat exchange is slow, and a substantial temperature difference usually exists just above the ground.?
You might also like to view...
In reality, biomes
a. are not uniform but consist of a mosaic of patches each with somewhat different biological communities b. are not uniform but consist of a mosaic of patches, each with the same biological communities c. are very uniform, but can have normal variations in temperatures from one region to another d. are very uniform in order to resist environmental disruptions e. are very diverse in order to resist environmental disruptions to the sameness of all communities in the biome
How is ethnicity different from nationality?
What will be an ideal response?
At temperate latitudes, a stable water column with a pycnocline near the surface will ________ primary production in the spring and ________ primary production in late summer.
A. decrease; decrease B. increase; decrease C. decrease; increase D. increase; increase E. None of these is correct; both will be moderately productive.
Nacreous clouds form in the ____
a. troposphere b. stratosphere c. ionosphere d. mesosphere e. thermosphere