The Weathermakers (1967) Read Online Free PDF Page B

tropopause is the so-called stratosphere. The airflow there is almost entirely laminar; it flows horizontally, with very little vertical motion.”
    My head was beginning to spin. “Wait a minute. One of you, I forget which, said air is a fluid. Did I hear that right?”
    “Fluids can be liquids, gases, or plasmas,” Tuli answered.
    “Get the picture?” Ted resumed. “What we call weather only happens in the troposphere . . . and it’s in turbulent flow. Above the tropopause, no turbulence and no weather to speak of.”
    “There are jet streams up there,” Tuli said. “They have considerable effect on the weather.”
    “Sure. And if you go farther up there’re electrical effects in the ionosphere, and magnetic storms from solar flares, and cosmic particles and whatnot. But they’re second- or third-order effects. Don’t really make much difference in the day-to-day weather down here. Might have some long-range climatological effects, though.”
    “But the actual weather happens in turbulent air,” I said, trying to get it straight.
    “Check. And because it’s turbulent, there was no real way to predict it, until these Kraichnan Institute studies showed that you can determine what’s happening in a turbulent flow. What I’ve done is to use the Kraichnan work, apply it to weather forecasting. If it works, we’ll be able to really predict the weather, instead of trying to outguess it.”
    “But how are weather forecasts made now? They seem to be pretty good, even without this turbulence business.”
    Ted grinned and leaned back in his chair. “How do they do it now? Lots of ways. Flipping coins, playing numbers games on the computers, waiting for twinges in toes or knees—”
    “Ted, be fair,” Tuli said. “The principal technique is the method of persistence—”
    “You look at the weather around you,” Ted took up, “and try to figure out what’s heading your way and how fast it’s moving. Gets complicated, but it works pretty well for the short term—couple days or so.”
    Tuli added, “We can ‘see’ all around the globe now, thanks to satellites. And detailed mathematical models allow the meteorologists to forecast with some accuracy how the weather patterns will move across the Earth’s surface.”
    “Still a lot of hunchwork in it,” Ted insisted.
    Tuli nodded agreement.
    “It’s slightly bewildering,” I said. Looking around, I could see that we were the last ones in the cafeteria.
    “They’re closing up,” Barney said. “If we don’t want to get the floor-scrubbers showering us . . .”
    “Okay, back to work,” Ted agreed.
    We got up and headed for the door.
    “But you’re really serious,” I asked him, “about this weather-control idea?”
    For the first time, Tuli let a smile break across his stolid expression. “Better ask him a harder question: like, does he intend to breathe all afternoon.”
    “It’s that definite,” I said as we went through the doorway and into the hall.
    “If this forecasting scheme works,” Ted answered, “there’s only one thing more that we’ll need.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Permission.”
    “Is that all? Why, Dr. Rossman should be glad to give you the go-ahead.”
    Ted shook his head. “It’s a new idea. And what’s worse, it’s not his idea.”
A mountain was being built. Vaster than the Alps, higher than the Himalayas, an immense, invisible mountain of air was forming over the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda and the mainland of America. From high aloft, cold, dense air was sinking down, weighted by its low temperature, and piling up at the ocean’s surface. The mountain grew and spread, real as a peak of rock. But this mountain moved. It swirled in clockwise rotation, pivoting over the ocean, winds flowing out from its edges across land and sea. The high-pressure system pushed its western frontier nearly a hundred miles inland of the American coast. Warm, semitropical air from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico was