Open AccessA note on the temperature of the air at great heights
Author(s) -
F. A. Lindemann,
G. M. B. Dobson
Publication year - 1923
Publication title -
proceedings of the royal society of london. series a, containing papers of a mathematical and physical character
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2053-9150
pISSN - 0950-1207
DOI - 10.1098/rspa.1923.0061
Subject(s) - meteor (satellite) , stratosphere , meteoroid , density of air , meteorology , air temperature , atmospheric sciences , front (military) , radiation , atmospheric temperature , environmental science , physics , geology , optics , astronomy
In a previous paper it has been shown that the temperature of the air above 60 km., as calculated from meteor observations, is much higher than that between, say, 10 and 50 km., and is probably about 300° A. It appears that the only explanation of the high temperature is that the air absorbs an appreciable amount of sun's radiation in addition to earth's radiation. If this is so, one might expect a large change in temperature between summer and winter.—a change greater than that which occurs, say, in tbs stratosphere, viz., about 6°. The object of this note is to examine whether it is possible to kind evidence of this change of temperature. If so, it is confirmation of the previous result, that the temperature at great heights is above that of the stratosphere. Unfortunately, the main method used in calculating the actual density in the previous paper involves the cube of the meteor's velocity, and the velocity, as measured by eye observations, is necessarily very inaccurate. Thus the errors of observation mask any small difference in density of the order of magnitude which might be expected. There are, however, live other possible eases in which a difference between summer and winter might be shown, but in most of those the effect expected is very small:— (1) As the temperature of the compressed gas in front of the meteor is proportional to the initial temperature of the air, one might expect the minimum velocity at which meteors can appear to be greater in winter than in summer. The results of eye observations are not sufficiently accurate to show this difference.