A research team from Harvard University was able to work out what rainstorms might look like on Earth millions of years ago, which is expected to happen again, but not in the near future anyway.
To reach these results, which were published in the prestigious "Nature" journal on November 3, this team built accurate computer simulations of the Earth's climate when its average temperature is 11 to 16 degrees Celsius higher than it is Now, something that was already common in various hot periods of Earth's long history.
In their simulation, the researchers achieved that temperature rise by raising the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dozens of times compared to the current level, or increasing the brightness of the sun by about 10%.
sudden transformations
According to the study, the surface of the land and the sea becomes warm due to the absorption of the intense heat of the sun in such conditions, and the air near the surface also becomes warm, and this causes the formation of what is known as the “inhibition layer”, a barrier that prevents clouds from rising to The upper atmosphere and the formation of rain clouds.
Over the course of long hours, clouds gather below the damping layer, but above it is the atmosphere, which is much cooler, and with the intense pressure from below and above the barrier, sometimes this barrier is breached, causing a massive movement of heat and cold between the two layers, which in turn causes a huge batch of rainstorms;
After that, everything returns to normal and the barrier is formed again, and as soon as the load rises below and above it again, it presents a new batch of rainstorms, and so the weather lasts for a few days.
The damping layer is a barrier that prevents clouds from rising into the upper atmosphere and forming rain clouds (pixabi).
tense atmosphere
According to the researchers, in the official statement issued by Harvard University, the simulation showed that the amount of rain that fell in only 6 hours is equal to the amount of rain that falls during some tropical cyclones in the United States over long days.
Remarkably, this difference in temperature was not large enough to imagine that it could cause rainstorms of this size.
Although a temperature increase to this level cannot be reached at the present time, this type of result gives us an opportunity to know that small changes in the climate system can cause results that were not expected.