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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I Believe That, In Reflecting On The
General Laws Of The Equilibrium Of The Gaseous Masses Constituting Our
Atmosphere, We
May find, in the interruption of the current that blows
from an homonymous pole, in the want of the renewal
Of air in the
torrid zone, and in the continued action of an ascending humid
current, a very simple cause of the coincidence of these phenomena.
While the north-easterly breeze blows with all its violence north of
the equator, it prevents the atmosphere which covers the equinoctial
lands and seas from saturating itself with moisture. 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.
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