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     Language Tips > 2003
    Updated: 2003-09-08 01:00

    Elephants in the Sky
    空中有群水做的“象”
    A fluffy cumulous cloud weighs the equivalent of approximately 200,000 elephants, a meteorologist calculates.

    Ever wonder how much a cloud weighs? What about a hurricane? A meteorologist has done some estimates and the results might surprise you.

    Let's start with a very simple white puffy cloud - a cumulus cloud. How much does the water in a cumulus cloud weigh? Peggy LeMone, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, did the numbers.

    "The water in the little cloud weighs about 550 tons," she calculates. "Or if you want to convert it to something that might be a little more meaningful … think of elephants."

    Assume an elephant weighs about six tons, she says, that would mean that water inside a typical cumulous cloud would weigh about one hundred elephants.

    The thought of a hundred elephants-worth of water suspended in the sky begs another question - what keeps it up there?

    "First of all, the water isn't in elephant sized particles, it's in tiny tiny tiny particles," explains LeMone.

    And those particles float on the warmer air that's rising below. But still, the concept of so much water floating in the sky was surprising even to a meteorologist like LeMone.

    "I had no idea how much a cloud would weigh, actually, when I started the calculations," she says.

    So how many elephant units of water are inside a big storm cloud … 10 times bigger all the way around than the "puffy" cumulus cloud? Again, LeMone did the numbers: About 200,000 elephants.

    Now, ratchet up the calculations for a hurricane about the size of Missouri and the figures get really massive.

    "What we're doing is weighing the water in one cubic meter theoretically pulled from a cloud and then multiplying by the number of meters in a whole hurricane," she explains.

    The result? Forty million elephants. That means the water in one hurricane weighs more than all the elephants on the planet. Perhaps even more than all the elephants that have ever lived on the planet.

    (Agencies)

    想知道一朵云有多重嗎?還有颶風?一位氣象學家做了大概的估算,結果可能會讓你大吃一驚哦。

    讓我們先從一團很普通的蓬松的白色積雨云算起。一朵積雨云所含的水有多重呢?科羅拉多州玻爾得國家大氣研究中心的資深科學家佩吉·萊蒙算出了一組數據。

    她推算:“一小片云大約含有550噸水。如果你想把它轉換成更加實際一點的東西,那就想想大象吧。”

    她說,假設一頭大象有6噸重,那么一朵普通的積雨云所含的水就相當于大約100頭大象那么重。

    一想到100頭大象那么重的水懸在空中,你不得不考慮另一個問題——是什么讓它牢牢的掛在天空中的呢?

    “首先,構成水的粒子并沒有大象那么大,而是非常非常地小。”萊蒙解釋說。

    而且那些微粒漂浮在正在上升的暖空氣上面。但是盡管如此,想到有這么多水漂浮在空中,哪怕像萊蒙這樣的氣象學家也會覺得不可思議的。

    “當我剛開始計算的時候,我真的不知道一朵云有多重。”她說。

    那么一塊兒比“蓬松的”積雨云大10倍的暴風云中含有的水相當于多少只大象呢?萊蒙再次得出數據:大約是20萬只。

    現在,逐步計算像密蘇里颶風那樣的熱帶風暴的含水量,數據真是大的驚人。

    “我們正在做的是從理論上測量一立方米的云所含的水的重量,然后再乘以整個颶風的體積。”她解釋說。

    知道結果嗎?相當于4千萬頭大象。這就意味著颶風中所含的水比地球上所有的大象加到一起還要重,也許會超過地球上曾經有過的所有大象體重的總和。

    (中國日報網站譯)

     
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