Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Hot And Moist
Air Of The Torrid Zone Rises Aloft, And Flows Off Again Towards The
Poles; While Inferior Polar Currents, Bringing Drier And Colder
Strata, Are Every Instant Taking The Place Of The Columns Of Ascending
Air.
By this constant action of two opposite currents, the humidity,
far from being accumulated in the equatorial region, is carried
towards the cold and temperate regions.
During this season of breezes,
which is that when the sun is in the southern signs, the sky in the
northern equinoctial zone is constantly serene. The vesicular vapours
are not condensed, because the air, unceasingly renewed, is far from
the point of saturation. In proportion as the sun, entering the
northern signs, rises towards the zenith, the breeze from the
north-east moderates, and by degrees entirely ceases. The difference
of temperature between the tropics and the temperate northern zone is
then the least possible. It is the summer of the boreal pole; and, if
the mean temperature of the winter, between 42 and 52 degrees of north
latitude, be from 20 to 26 degrees of the centigrade thermometer less
than the equatorial heat, the difference in summer is scarcely from 4
to 6 degrees. The sun being in the zenith, and the breeze having
ceased, the causes which produce humidity, and accumulate it in the
northern equinoctial zone, become at once more active. The column of
air reposing on this zone, is saturated with vapours, because it is no
longer renewed by the polar current. Clouds form in this air saturated
and cooled by the combined effects of radiation and the dilatation of
the ascending air. This air augments its capacity for heat in
proportion as it rarefies. With the formation and collection of the
vesicular vapours, electricity accumulates in the higher regions of
the atmosphere. The precipitation of the vapours is continual during
the day; but it generally ceases at night, and frequently even before
sunset. The showers are regularly more violent, and accompanied with
electric explosions, a short time after the maximum of the diurnal
heat. This state of things remains unchanged, till the sun enters into
the southern signs. This is the commencement of cold in the northern
temperate zone. The current from the north-pole is then
re-established, because the difference between the heat of the
equinoctial and temperate regions augments daily. The north-east
breeze blows with violence, the air of the tropics is renewed, and can
no longer attain the degree of saturation. The rains consequently
cease, the vesicular vapour is dissolved, and the sky resumes its
clearness and its azure tint. Electrical explosions are no longer
heard, doubtless because electricity no longer comes in contact with
the groups of vesicular vapours in the high regions of the air, I had
almost said the coating of clouds, on which the fluid can accumulate.
We have here considered the cessation of the breezes as the principal
cause of the equatorial rains. These rains in each hemisphere last
only as long as the sun has its declination in that hemisphere.
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