Why airplanes taxi

Mxsmanic wrote:
WingFlaps writes:

So how do you explain the rather well known lapse rate?

It depends on which lapse rate you have in mind.

Solar heating at the surface produces a static temperature gradient, the
environmental lapse rate. Light to which the atmosphere is transparent is
absorbed at the surface and converted to heat. Part of this is reradiated,
but at lower frequencies that may be reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere,
the rest heats the air at the surface directly by conduction. So, overall,
the air is always warmest at the surface. There are some anomalies higher in
the atmosphere.

Parcels of air that rise in the atmosphere will cool as the pressure in the
atmosphere drops, and this is responsible the adiabatic lapse rate.

In both cases, the correlation is between temperature and altitude, not
temperature and pressure.

Nope.

Air molecules don't have altimeters to tell them the altitude.

--
Jim Pennino

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