Swayseeker

Air with a lower density will rise, but if the pressure exerted by the less dense air is the same as the pressure of the surrounding air, which it usually is, air cannot rush in to the space occupied by the less dense air. For instance if you warm up the air in a house to hundreds of degrees above outside temperature, the air is far less dense inside, but the molecules are moving faster and the pressure inside the house is the same as that outside if you keep windows open. Air does not move into the house (except for some mixing, etc).

Vegetation has a high emissivity (close to that of a blackbody) so it can lose heat fast. But if there is material with high heat content (rocks, big trunks of trees, etc) it takes longer to cool down. Hillsides lose the energy by radiating and the air immediately above the ground then becomes cool and moves down the slope. With clouds and high relative humidity the sky temperatures is higher and you get more downwelling radiation (there is a formula, or rather there are formulas for the downwelling radiation) which keeps everything warmer. A leaf, with its high emissivity and low heat content can cool rapidly by radiating and often dew will form on leaves.

I would like a bit of a review of my ideas and would appreciate it if anyone points out a serious fault with them - see ideas below: Transporting moist air by means of natural convection in a pipe: Run a huge black pipe, that will get hot in the sun, from the sea to a few hundred metres above the area needing rain. Moist air from the sea will rise in the pipe by means of natural convection and cause convectional rain. This idea could bring rain to many areas. It would be similar to a solar updraft tower, which can deliver huge volumes of air per second to the atmosphere. Heat the seawater by concentrated solar power (or other means) near the inlet of the pipe to increase relative humidity. This system will be cheaper than solar updraft towers. Some calculations: For a 20 m diameter vertical pipe that is 500 m high with air temperature of 25 deg C outside and 30 deg C inside, a flow of about 3340 cubic metres per second can be expected. Eventually you will have a few cubic kilometres of moist air in the region if wind is weak. To do your own calculations search for "stack effect draft." One could have a few such pipes into a region to spread humid air. One or two cubic kilometres of moist air per day can be delivered like this. Pipes could be heated more by reflecting sunlight onto them with mirrors. Rocks that the pipe rests on could be heated by solar energy so that the pipe stays warm at night and can keep on delivering moist air. It is quite likely that at night the air from just above the sea will be warmer than land air, which will cause it to rise in the pipe. Moist air is less dense than drier air, which will help it to rise in the pipe. But here is another idea. In desert regions with hot air one can significantly change the density of the air by increasing relative humidity, because hot air holds so much water vapour and water vapour is less dense than air. At a temperature of 40 deg C with RH of 30% and P=101.325 kPa, air has a density of about 1.118 kg/cubic metre. If you raise the RH of this air to 90% it has a density of about 1.099 kg/cubic metre. This is the same as air with an RH of 30% and T=45 deg C. By increasing the RH of the air with RH = 30% to one with RH = 90% (all at T=40 deg C) you have about the same effect on density as raising the temperature of the air by 5 deg C ( from 40 to 45 deg C). In hot deserts It seems you do not have to heat the air to cause natural convection - you can just increase RH and the air will rise by natural convection in the pipe. The RH can be increased by heating seawater at the inlet of the pipe. At T=40 deg C with RH=90%, there are about 46 grams of water vapour in every cubic metre of air transported in the pipe. What happens when the air comes out the pipe? Well, say the air with RH=90% and T=40 deg C comes out in air with temperature of 35 deg. Clouds will form with bases at about 245 metres above the outlet of the pipe (very low clouds). The clouds could display huge vertical ascent from their bases because of high RH, high dew point and so on (tall clouds with low bases and towering high tops will result). If a rain cycle results maximum, temperatures will be reduced by evaporation and minimum temperatures will increase because of increasing effective sky temperatures. This depends on strength of sunlight, temperature of water coming into the greenhouse, heat losses and so on, but it seems that to form 1 cubic metre of 90% RH air at 40 deg C starting with 30% RH air at 25 deg C, every second, will take very roughly 200 square metres of surface irradiated by the sun. A massive greenhouse with water in could suffice to provide all the humid air needed. Similar greenhouses have been proposed for solar updraft towers. A greenhouse 1 km by 1 km could provide 5000 cubic metres of RH=90% with T=40 deg C air every second.

Air can hold more water vapour when it is hotter. When the relative humidity is as high as 100% the vapour will start condensing out if the air cools. Here is an example of how relative humidity changes: Suppose you have a given mass (parcel) of air that is heated. It expands and pushes the surrounding air out, but if you measure pressure of the surrounding air before and after you will find it remains the same (if you are quick enough to measure pressure before it rises significantly) and so does the pressure of the heated, though less dense air. The heated air is at the same pressure as the surrounding air otherwise air would rush in. The weight of all components of the heated parcel is the same as it was (including water vapour), but the density of all components is less. The partial pressure of nitrogen, water vapour, oxygen, etc remains the same as you heat the parcel and so does the total pressure (it remains at the atmospheric pressure). The relative humidity is defined as the partial pressure of the water vapour (which has remained the same) divided by the partial pressure of what the water vapour would be if the air were saturated with water vapour at that higher temperature. Well as you increase the temperature, the partial pressure of water vapour, if the air were saturated at that temperature, increases a lot, so relative humidity falls. But you have the same contents in the parcel that has expanded and, being hotter, it will rise to colder heights. You can prove all this by using the fact that the partial pressure of a gas= total pressure x mole fraction of the gas. If no gas escapes from the heated parcel, the mole fraction of each component (water vapour, etc) remains the same. When you proceed to a higher altitude the pressure does get less and you cannot assume the partial pressures of all components are the same - they are all less and you will have to use a new saturation pressure for water vapour (the temperature is less so the saturation pressure is less) and a new partial pressure for the water vapour.

Say I heat air that has a relative humidity of 60% near the ground. Let the initial temperature be 10 deg C and suppose I heat it to 25 deg C. Then the relative humidity is about 23.2%. If I use an environmental lapse rate of 6.5 deg C per km and an adiabatic lapse rate of 9.8 deg C then this air could rise (25-10)/(9.8-6.5)=4.5 km before it is at the same temperature as the surrounding air (it will then not rise or fall). The dew point for an RH of 23.2 and temperature of 25 deg C is 2.4. Espy's equation now tells me that the parcel only has to rise 125(25-2.4) = 2825 m before clouds form. It seems that generally one can just heat air near the ground and clouds will form. Is this correct?