A theory of clouds. ( Analogies, Newtonian physics and chromatography)

[Brian White]

I have found in the realm of the climate change and global warming blog-sphere there is an extraordinary level of fundamentalism.  The anti-global warming people are nuts in many cases.  The response from the other side (pretty much asking for prison sentences if they don't agree) is also nuts. In Reality both sides are wrong, they are little better than cults.    Lots about climate is still unknown.   I find it alarming that both sides are not that interested in figuring out those unknowns and putting them into the models.   Huge unknowns about cloud physics.   They simply do not have it right for the rainforests.  The amazon river delivers twice as much water to the sea as it is "supposed" to.  The atmospheric physicists do not know how that water gets inland in the first place.   The biotic pump theory 2006 was rejected out of hand even though it provided a mechanism to "suck moisture" inland.  (Out of hand because nobody has been able to reject the physics of the biotic pump theory yet).  Here is my contribution.  An analogy.  Air goes up into the high atmosphere through cumulus clouds.  The clouds both dry the air and pump  it very high.   Above the amazon region,  there is a vast fleet of clouds pumping and drying air.  Newtonian physics (action and reaction) means that if you are pumping something up, the pump is being pushed down.  The cloud is the pump.  The pump is been driven by the energy of condensation.  I will get to the chromatography analogy in my answer to this post.            Better put in the link before I forget https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPO8dWm_GIg

[Brian White]

When condensation occurs in a cloud,  energy is released.   Most people call it heat.   But lets watch what happens.  Cloud droplets fall,  the smallest ones fall slowly but they are still falling.   As they fall they evaporate.    Sometimes they only fall a meter before evaporating,  some of the bigger ones fall a hundred meters.  Some fall right to the ground.    Evaporation absorbs energy.  So if you look at a convection cloud base (not raining) with an aggregation of billions of droplets falling,  why is the base remaining at the same height?  It is because there is air going up through the cloud.  I am saying that in the bigger convection clouds (and maybe the smaller ones) the air is being sucked in.    People have rejected the idea that the cloud is a pump by saying that the air is rising and also surrounding air  pushes air in.  I agree that air is  rising under the cloud.  But you cannot get air speeds inside a cloud of 50 and 80 km an hour vertically simply from rising convicting air. And everyone agrees that that energy of condensation of water is large and it is released inside the cloud.   So what is happening is fairly simple,  the droplets form and evaporate all the way to the top of the cloud,  the 2 phase flow is simply converting the energy (efficiently) from  what would be radiated heat,  to vertical motion.  Water and water vapor going down,  and dry air going up.  The energy released by condensation (mostly near the bottom of the cloud) is causing the falling droplets nearby to evaporate.  This is like some of the processes that occur in chromatography.  (I think in gel chromatography it is most similar).   The heat rise towards space is slowed and much of the energy is converted to movement.  So in summary,  The clouds over the Amazon become one of the pumps (in series) that drives the Hadley cell circulation.   They create a suction underneath, the clouds are a one way "valve"  that dries air, using the energy of condensation to do it,  and the biggest cloud systems  pump dry air all the way up into the next atmospheric layer.