The Latent Heat of Condensation

It was the latent heat of condensation that really drew me to love all things weather and climate.  This simple mathematical equation, detailing in numbers a process of precipitation and the cloud forming cycle, fascinated me.  That was 40 years ago and here I am still writing about it. 

What I saw then and still see today (with greater awareness) is one of the power mechanisms behind the development of convection storms.  And it all begins with dust and moisture.  Specifically, very fine, micro dust particles, suspended in the atmosphere and moisture as water vapor.  As an air mass rises it cools and water vapor begins to condense on particulate matter in the rising air mass forming clouds.  That moment of condensation releases a minute amount of heat as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms come together around the dust particle.  That minute amount of heat then rises the air mass higher, which cools further, which rises higher again as more condensation occurs.  The heat released is the latent heat of condensation.  Latent because it was there, but not yet there; its release was dependent on other processes.  

Eventually, the gathering water droplet becomes too heavy and descends the cloud column.  As it descends it heats up and rises again, repeating this again and again and finally becoming larger and larger.  In large convection storms the rain droplets might rise and fall many times freezing as they rise to the top of the storm clouds, melting a bit as they rocket down the column again.  This is happening inside the towering cumulonimbus storm clouds you might see in the summer which build and rise into the upper atmosphere.  The raindrops inside these storms might freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw so often that they finally fall out as precipitation in the form of hail.  Iced rain drops we could say, too heavy to resist gravity, they come pouring out, often with damaging effect.

Psalms 104 talks about God as sustainer of life, giving food, shelter, and weather through all seasons.

All the raindrops formed and fallen since the dawn of time have formed the same way.  That’s how it’s done in the weather and climate world.  Forty years ago I actually learned the mathematical formula for calculating the moment that would occur, at what temperature, the impact on the storm, etc. by using data about moisture content, air mass temperature, etc.  And that same formula still calculates how raindrops, hail, storms, etc. are being formed.  The power mechanisms of storms have not changed or broken in the past 30 years, but they have become more powerful in releasing energy and growing larger.  And they are going to continue to develop with the same processes.  

Our understanding of these weather and climate processes help us predict with greater accuracy the content and magnitude of weather events.  Much is still unknown and weather prediction is not an exact science, but it is a science.  And based on scientific rules and processes we can learn and predict and understand this beautiful world that God has made.  

And we can also learn that it is a world governed and held within certain laws of nature that are not going to change.  The entertaining “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” scenario will not be our future.  No toasted bread, carrots sticks, or ice cream sundaes are going to fall from the sky.  That is fantasy.  What is not fantasy is the wonderful way our world’s weather and climate is created to bring rain and snow in due season, sunshine and summer as predicted, and harvest.  We could also ask ourselves if anything we’ve done in the past 100 or so years has changed these processes.

Psalms 104 talks about God as sustainer of life, giving food, shelter, and weather through all seasons.  I like that very much.  And, I pray that God would continue to water “the mountains from his upper chambers; the land [would be] satisfied by the fruit of his work.”   Still, if I had been writing Psalms 104, I probably would have wanted to put something in there about the latent heat of condensation, but then again, in some way, the author already did much more poetically. 

Photo by Arto Marttinen on Unsplash