EPSC 181 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Sodium Acetate, Salt Lake, Heat Transfer
6 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
There aren"t places that are really cold and really wet because cold air can"t hold as much moisture. Temperature, precipitation, and their seasonality are critical controls on the distribution of terrestrial biomes and on their productivity. At present, poleward heat transport by oceans is comparable to that of the atmosphere. Hurricanes transfer heat from the tropics to higher latitudes, using latent heat. Volcanoes also transfer heat from the earth"s interior using latent heat. If cooled too slowly, or if there are not any seed crystals present, a system can stay a liquid at temperatures below its solidification temperature. Heat is stored in the high-energy form (the liquid) even though it"s at room temperature. Crystallization releases that heat and raises the temperature: this is the latent heat of crystallization. The data appears this way because it is the effect of latent heat, not the actual temperature. A lot of the water vapor just precipitates back over the ocean.
