*Sonic*

Daft question

but when on a plane, it could be chucking it down with rain, but then you take off and go above the clouds essentially then above the rain

and then you tend to have fantastic sunshine as though its a nice hot summers day,

but why flying at 40,000 feet, so much closer to the sun, is it -40 degrees outside?

lightning101

The troposphere is the layer closest to the earth, and it is the layer in which we live. It is about ten miles deep. Seventy five percent of the mass of all our atmospheric molecules is in the troposphere, and this is where we find water vapor, dust, pollen, and soot particles. Weather happens in the troposphere. This layer is turbulent, with storms and atmospheric mixing.

In the troposphere, the air cools gradually as it gets further from the earth. At the very top of this layer the air temperature is about 76 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. This is important, because it changes water vapor into ice, forming the cold trap, a temperature region where water vapor stops going up. If we had no cold trap, water molecules could rise in the atmosphere where they would eventually break down into oxygen and hydrogen. The small, light hydrogen molecules could then escape into space. Earth would loose its water if we had no cold trap.

TopBanana

I think it's because of the reduced pressure.

Chelspeed

And hot air rises too. So higher up, nearer the sun and yet it's colder? wtf?

D.K.1

Steve, you're mind is working overtime again

KiwiGTI

This should explain it all :

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy...tmosphere.html

RichS

In terms of relative distance, 40000 feet is insignificant.

Firstly (and irrelevant anyway) 40000 feet is your altitute measured from Earth. Depending on your global position, it's pretty unlikely you'd actually be as much as 40000 feet closer to the sun when flying at this altitude.
But that's not the point anyway.

40000 feet is about 7.5 miles.
The sun is about 93 million miles away and over the course of a year this distance between varies by about 3 million miles (it's actually closer in winter in the northern hemisphere).

So a difference of 7.5 miles when you're flying has no affect at all on temperature.

Paul3446

That's weird, my loft is always really hot and i thought it was because I was closer to the sun!

ScuuBdoo

up to 36000 feet the temperature drops 1.98 degrees every 1000feet

from 36000 to 65500 feet the temperature remains constant at -56.5 degrees.

ozzy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere#Temperature_and_the_atmospheric _layers

The weird thing I've found through climbing at altitude is that you notice solar radiation much more than at sea level. With my pretty-boy Scots skin, I've used factor 75 when high on the mountains. You get a nice sun tan, but you freeze your nads off at the same time

^Qwerty^

IIRC, I was told to knock 3 degrees off for every 1000ft I went up. The actualy amount changes per day, location, time, etc.

Chelspeed

The references all explain how much temperature falls as you go up but none of them has yet explained why. More links please.

NotoriousREV

It's because contrary to popular belief, we are heated by the fires of hell from below. You're actually 40,000 feet further from the molten lava that will one day burn your soul for eternity and so colder. Hope this helps.

j4ckos mate

its becausr some stupd c&*t left the door open

why do you have the lifejacket video on the shuttle from man to london

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

Basically in this region the higher you go the air becomes less dense, hence it cools due to the Joule - Kelvin effect (expansive cooling, like letting air out of a tyre). But go even higher then the air still becomes less dense - but temps rise as the molecules absorb radiation from the sun.

Its all explained in the wikipedia link above

Leslie

The air is warmed by the longer wave IR radiation reflection by the Earth. The higher you go the less the warming effect.

Les

nathanb

iTrader: (1)

Nearly every post in this thread is twisting my melon!!