Connection Between Isotopes and Temperature/weather
18O is two neutrons heavier than 16O and causes the water molecule in which it occurs to be heavier by that amount. The addition of more energy is required to vaporize H218O than H216O, and H218O liberates more energy when it condenses. In addition, H216O tends to diffuse more rapidly.
Because H216O requires less energy to vaporize, and is more likely to diffuse to the liquid surface, the first water vapor formed during evaporation of liquid water is enriched in H216O, and the residual liquid is enriched in H218O. When water vapor condenses into liquid, H218O preferentially enters the liquid, while H216O is concentrated in the remaining vapor.
As an air mass moves from a warm region to a cold region, water vapor condenses and is removed as precipitation. The precipitation removes H218O, leaving progressively more H216O-rich water vapor. This distillation process causes precipitation to have lower 18O/16O as the temperature decreases. Additional factors can affect the efficiency of the distillation, such as the direct precipitation of ice crystals, rather than liquid water, at low temperatures.
Due to the intense precipitation that occurs in hurricanes, the H218O is exhausted relative to the H216O, resulting in relatively low 18O/16O ratios. The subsequent uptake of hurricane rainfall in trees, creates a record of the passing of hurricanes that can be used to create a historical record in the absence of human records.
Read more about this topic: Oxygen Isotope Ratio Cycle
Famous quotes containing the words connection between, connection, temperature and/or weather:
“Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people’s crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translate into concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest person possesses when, in connection with nature and the world, he experiences himself as “man”!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“Is it possible
That any may find
Within one heart so diverse mind,
To change or turn as weather and wind?
Is it possible?”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)