Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T06:52:19.497Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAP. X - SMOOTHING THE INITIAL DATA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

Get access

Summary

We are not concerned to know all about the weather, nor even to trace the entangled detail of the path of every air-particle. A judicious selection is necessary for our peace of mind. For some such reason it is customary, at stations which report wind by telegraph, to replace the instantaneous velocity by a mean value over about ten minutes. An extension of this process must be contemplated, for there is a good deal of evidence to show that the wind is full of small “secondary cyclones” or other whirls having the most various diameters. The arithmetical process can only take account individually of such whirls as have diameters greater than the distance between the centres of the red chequers in our co-ordinate chessboard, and this length has been taken provisionally as 400 km.

If we smooth out these whirls we shall have to make amends by introducing suitable eddy-diffusivities. So far meteorologists do not appear to have attended to eddy-diffusivities of this kind. We shall refer to them again in Ch. 11/4.

The evidence for the existence of such eddies includes the following:

  1. (i) The impossible rate of accumulation of air deduced in Ch. 9.3 from observations at three stations.

  2. […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×