On Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 11:46:52 AM UTC-8, Solving Tornadoes wrote:

On Sunday, July 18, 2021 at 10:58:22 PM UTC-7, James McGinn wrote:

There is a general misconception that the reduction is lift that aircraft experience in moist air is a result of moist air being lower in density than dry air. Supposedly this confirms the notion that the moisture in moist air is monomolecular H2O,

the molecular equivalent of steam (gaseous H2O). Actually, this is impossible. As confirmed by hundreds of years of experimental evidence, steam (gaseous H2O) can only exist above the boiling temperature/pressure of H2O. Obviously earth's atmosphere
never gets hot enough to support the existence of steam which has a boiling point temperature greater than any temperature found in the atmosphere. So, contrary to what people generally assume, all of the moisture in earth's atmosphere consists of
microdroplets/clusters of H2O. And as long as the diameter of these microdroplets stay smaller than the length of a photon they are invisible--just as invisible as steam.

Nevertheless, aircraft do experience reduced lift in moist air. And (due to the fact that moist air contains droplets of H2O that are larger than the N2 and O2 molecules that they replace) moist air is denser (heavier) than dry air. And so, given

that it is generally true that denser air provides more lift than less dense air there appears to be a contradiction here. If all of this is true, why does heavier, denser, moist air not increase lift? Why does it reduce lift?

Before we can answer that question there are two other truths about aerodynamics that we need to clarify:
1) The energy that causes lift in an airplane doesn't come from the engine of the airplane. The energy that comes from the engine of the airplane is used to overcome drag. The energy that causes lift comes from air pressure--it comes from the

atmosphere itself; And,

2) there is a finite amount of energy per volume of air. And, therefore, there is a finite amount of energy that can be efficiently extracted from a volume of air. Flying faster allows you to use more air and, thereby, extract more energy from it.

But flying faster doesn't increase the amount of energy per volume that an airplane gets out of the air.

The reason lift is reduced in moist air is because liquid H2O has a very high heat capacity, which is just a fancy way of saying that it absorbs energy. Specifically, it is harder to extract the finite amount of energy from a volume of air because so

much of it is soaked up by the liquid water that is in the air. So, stating that you know moist air is lighter because it reduces lift is, well, nonsense. It is an ignorance based assertion.

This falsehood has been promoted by the meteorological lobby. The truth is that moist air is heavier, not lighter, than dry air. And claiming that reduced drag associated with moist air is evidence that substantiates the notion that moist air is

lighter is an invalid argument. Because it fails to account for other factors that may actually be causing the reduction in lift. The fact is, as indicated, water's ability to absorb energy is greater than that of any other liquid. This is the reason why
moist air reduces lift. And it is one of the reasons pilots are advised to avoid clouds (another good reason is because clouds tend to hide high energy vortices and wind shear). And if it was true that denser air increases lift that wouldn't be the case,
pilots would be advised to go skipping across the atmosphere on clouds, taking advantage of the increased lift provided by their increased density.

The best way to know the weight/volume of moist air is to measure it. Nobody ever has. Meteorologists absolutely refuse to measure it. Being ensconced in a paradigm dominated by group-think stupidity, meteorologists measure the relative humidity and

think that that also indicates the weight/volume. And that simply ain't so. (Meteorologist look at things very differently than real scientist. They have their narrative that they hide from the public. They are more concerned about looking scientific
than they are being factual.) If you measure you know. If you guess based on indirect evidence you are just guessing. Reality is too complex. People are gullible. People are easily fooled. People miss details and the devil is in the details. People tend
to be easily convinced by anecdote and experts. And they don't realize that very often the experts are using the same flawed methods to come to the same flawed conclusion. When meteorologists are talking about "density," you never know when they are
talking about 1) the ratio of water to air or 2) the weight of air per volume. These are two very different concepts that they employ interchangeably. Sometimes they use them interchangeably in the same paragraph or the same sentence. And if you try to
get them to clarify they throw a hissy fit and stamp off. Meteorology is, in many respects, a belief system and not a real science.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

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