Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Tornado
Continued from page 7A
He said there were at least 35
twisters over the weekend.
Many were supercells, pow
erful storms in which the whole
cloud mass rotates, wrapping
the storm in rain.
It is not that giant rotation
that forms the tornado. Brooks
said. “You don't directly take
that rotation 10,000 feet above
the ground and somehow move
that down to the ground.”
But the rotating cloud mass
helps create a favorable envi
ronment for a tornado to form,
he said, offering a low cloud
base and strong wind shear.
Wind shear means that
winds are blowing in one direc
tion at one level and another
direction above, causing the air
in between to rotate.
Warm and moist air is
lighter than air that is cold and
dry, so the lighter stuff tends to
rise upward. As the rising air
cools, the moisture begins to
condense, producing clouds
and rain.
When the warm, moist air
rising from below reaches that
spinning area in the wind shear
it tilts the rotation and the fun
nel cloud forms.
Getting a better under
standing of how that rotation
reaches down to the ground is
a major focus of research.
Brooks added.
When it does reach the
ground, forces in the twister
become unbalanced and air is
drawn in at the base of the
tornado.
If conditions are just right,
winds speed up as they near
the center of the tornado, like a
figure skater spins faster when
she pulls her hands in close to
her body.
While tornadoes have
occurred in every state, they are
most common in the center of
the country, especially in
Tornado Alley, a band running
north from Texas through
Oklahoma and Kansas.
In most cases the formation
process is the same.
“If you get a good environ
ment to make a tornado, the
atmosphere doesn't care where
it is. It's just more common to
get those environments out
here,” Brooks said in a tele
phone interview from his
Oklahoma office.
Mars’ climate varies north to sout
(AP) — The north and south poles on
Mars look very different from each other,
and scientists now think they know why:
Circulation patterns in the red planet’s very
thin atmosphere tend to keep all the water
in the north, leaving the south pole high
and dry.
Mars exploration by unmanned space
craft has shown the northern hemisphere
has a large polar cap made up mostly of
frozen water, while the southern hemi
sphere has a much smaller cap made up
almost entirely of frozen carbon dioxide,
or dry ice.
A new computer model suggests the
apparently permanent difference results
partly from the much higher elevation in
the south — which is an average of three
miles higher than the north.
Mark Richardson of the California
Institute of Technology and John Wilson
of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
Laboratory at Princeton University
reported in a recent issue of the journal
Nature that the difference in elevation
shifts the Hadley effect, an atmospheric
circulation pattern created when heated
air rises from the warmer equator and
sinks toward the poles.
“It's the dominant form of atmospheric
circulation in the tropics here on Earth."
Richardson said, “where you get rising air
in the region most strongly heated by the
sun that has to be replaced by cooler air at
the surface.”
On Earth, however, the circulation is
balanced between the northern and south
ern tropics, causing the gentle trade winds
across the relatively flat and even expanse
of the ocean.
On Mars, the Hadley effect reaches
u
I think it is an important
step in understanding how
climate change on Mars
might be occurring.
— David Hinson
Stanford University
a dry
much farther toward the poles across
and dusty surface.
The huge difference in elevation
between the north and south poles also
tends to push the thin Martian air more
strongly from the high elevations of the
south toward the northern lowlands,
Richardson said.
The resulting imbalance dumps snow
and ice at the north pole of Man ^
may be responsible for its alternate ]
ot ice and dust, he said.
“On Earth, we're used to
southern summer is similar to the]
summer," Richardson said.‘‘butifs
way on Mars."
Mars is tilted on its axis at;
same degree as Earth, causing act
seasons as it orbits the sun.
Unlike Earth, however, Marsha-
variation in orbit that puts it a
cent closer to the sun when it is mi
the south, making the season much]
intense than summer in the nonheii j
sphere.
David Hinson of Stanford Un .
one of the leaders of the latest NASll
vey of Mars, said Martian weather J
the focus of several unmannedspfij
sions planned in the coming decade
He said the model develop!
Richardson and Wilson makes usefulf
parisons between actual measure!
taken by the Mars Global Surveu:
craft now orbiting the planet and;
simulations.
"It seems quite plausible tome,"
said. “I think it is an important:
understanding how climate changeocj
might lx* occurring.”
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