Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to listen ad-free, or unlock our entire vast and snoozy catalog of sleep stories, go to snoozecasts.com slash plus. This episode is brought to you by the mysterious regions above the clouds. Tonight we'll read from The New Air World, the Science of Meteorology Simplified by Willis Elmore, originally published in 1922. This work aimed to make the complex field of meteorology understandable to the lay person, particularly for those seeking to become more weather-wise. Beyond being an author, Willis Luther Moore was an American meteorologist and educator. He also served as chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau and President of the National Geographic Society. When Moore began his career for the Weather Bureau, Long Range, Weather Forecasting, was considered little more than Quackery, both by Moore himself and the scientific community at large. However, a little more than a decade later, in 1906, more announced that the weather bureau was about to begin forecasting the weather a month in advance using new scientific methods. The bureau made weekly forecasts a standard release in 1910. However, despite some successes, these would remain as inaccurate as the older methods. It wasn't until the 1970s that forecasts for multiple days became consistently reliable, thanks to more sophisticated computer models, satellite data, and improved observational networks.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now take a few deep breaths. A synoptic picture of the air.

How much do you know of the great aerial ocean on the bottom of which you live and in which human beings are just beginning to fly? Its variations of heat, cold, sunshine, cloud, and tempest, materially affect not only the health and happiness of man, but his commercial and industrial welfare, and yet few no more than little of the wonders of the life-giving medium that so intimately concerns them. At the height of 200 miles, here is only the invisible, the intangible ether, which, while too tenuous to be detected or measured by any appliances of man, is supposed to transmit the rays of the sun. These rays coming in the form of many different wavelengths and with widely differing velocities of vibration produce a multitude of phenomena as they are absorbed by or pass through the air or as they reach the surface of the earth. The longer and slower waves are converted into heat, the shorter and more rapid ones into light, and the minutest movements probably into electricity. Oxygen and nitrogen, which form the greater part of the atmosphere gases, absorb comparatively little of the solar rays, while water vapor, which constitutes a little more than 1% of the atmosphere, in which remains close to the Earth, absorbs large quantities. the fact that one half of the atmosphere, including nearly all of its water vapor, lies below an elevation of three and one half miles, it becomes evident that the greater part of the absorption of the sun's rays must take place in the lower strata. clear clear days, the atmosphere absorbs nearly one half of the sun's heat rays. The remainder reaches the surface of the earth, warms it, and in turn is radiated back into the air with this difference. That as Earth radiation, wave motion of the rays is longer and slower than it was when the rays entered our atmosphere as solar radiation. In this slower form, the rays are the more readily absorbed. The atmosphere is thus warmed largely from the bottom upwards,

which accounts for the perpetual freezing temperatures of high mountain peaks, although they are nearer the sun than are the bases from which they rise. At the height of 100 miles, The temperature at this altitude must be that of outside space, probably 459 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Air liquefies at 312 degrees Fahrenheit below, and therefore it cannot exist in the gaseous state in a region having a lower temperature. When it liquefies, it has the color and general appearance of water and about the same specific gravity. When a piece of steel and a lighted taper are brought together inside of a vessel filled with liquid air. The dense supply of oxygen makes combustion so rapid that the hard metal burns like Tinder. At the height of 50 miles, there is enough air here to refract light slightly as at twilight And to render luminous the meteors that rush with fearful velocity against its widely scattered molecules. At this distance from the Earth, there probably is no more air than would be found under the The receiver of the air pump. And the reader will be surprised to learn darkness is practically complete. Although the hour may be midday, for there are no dust-motes to scatter and diffuse and render visible the light rays of the sun. The darkness of outer space. It may be proven by taking an enclosed volume of air, freeing it of dust-motes, of which there are millions per cubic centimeter, and then trying to illuminate it. It will be found that no matter how powerful

the light directed into it, it remains wholly dark. When one looks upward on a clear day, he apparently sees the whole universe illuminated, but and in point of fact only the thin stratum of the Earth's air in which he lives is illuminated. Outer space is practically without temperature or light. The rays of the sun do not become either light or heat or electricity until they encounter the molecules of the air or the invisible dust

modes or the cloud particles near the earth and through interference are transmuted from the etheric vibrations into other forms of energy. At the height of 25 miles, air, light as it is, has still sufficient density to obstruct the passage of the minutest wavelengths of light. And here probably begins to be appreciable, the blue tint of the heavenly vault. At this short distance from the earth, there must be a stillness for there is no medium sufficiently dense to transmit sound. Two persons could not hear each other speak, even if they could live in this rare atmosphere,

which they could not. Here is eternal peace and no apparent motion. For storms and ascending and descending currents cease long before this level is reached. the cold is intense and daylight but a feeble illumination. There are no clouds. Isothermal stratum entered at the height of seven miles. We know that the temperature decreases rapidly with a scent. About one degree for each 300 feet until the top of the storm level is reached at about seven miles. When a most wonderful discovery is made, the thermometer no longer falls as the aviator rises or as balloons float to greater altitudes carrying self-registering instruments. The temperature remains practically stationary, so far as exploration has been made, which is to the height of over 19 miles.

We have named this region above storms the isothermal stratum. Its temperature everywhere is about 70 degrees below zero and it changes only about 6 degrees between winter and summer. Of course, we must assume that ultimately the temperature shades away to practically nothing as outer space is reached. Scientific and inventive genius is becoming so skillful in harnessing the forces of nature to man's desires that it is reasonable to anticipate that within a quarter of a century or less human beings will be nearly as numerous in the air as insects. They will remain aloft longer and sail to vastly greater distances and to higher altitudes. In time, dirigible ships may sail for days and possibly for weeks in the pure air aloft, carrying millions of passengers. At a height of one and one miles, there is little difference in the temperatures of day and night, except that the coolest time of the 24 hours is during daytime and not at night as would be most naturally supposed. is important information to an aviator or to the pilot of a balloon. At an altitude of 1,000 feet. In free air at the hottest time in mid-summer's heat, the air is found to be as much as 15 degrees lower than at the ground.

Almost within arm's length of the streets of great inland cities, there is a cool and healthful atmosphere when humanity is sweltering and from the heat below. Some youth who is reading this may develop the genius that will lift up whole city blocks into this cool and healthful region. Open steelwork below. The first level at one or two thousand feet above the hot streets express elevators to carry passengers and the climate of the cool mountain air is accessible to those who now live in discomfort at low populace centers. Man is just beginning to transport himself in the heather to trackless wilderness of the air. Certain it is that the hanging gardens of Babylon will be outdone in the 20th century, and the ire of the eagle left far below by those who will live a part of their time in elevated structures, having bases resting upon the earth, or who will fly to great distances aloft, and remain at whatever altitude furnishes them the most pleasant and beneficial conditions,

and that they may thus remain not only for days but for weeks without returning to the

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