Slashdot Mirror
"Ballooning" Spiders Use Electrostatic Forces To Generate Lift
KentuckyFC writes "Many types of small spider release threads into the air which then lift and carry them significant distances. Biologists have found them at altitudes of up to 4 km. The conventional thinking is that the threads catch thermal air currents which then carry them away but this does not explain how spiders perform their trick even when there is little or no wind. Now one physicist says the explanation is the atmosphere's natural electric field which has an average downward-pointing magnitude of 120 Volts per metre. He calculates that a strand of silk need only gain a negative charge of around 30 nanoCoulombs to lift a spider. That explains how the spiders take off on windless days, how they reach such great heights and how several strands can lift heavier spiders of up to 100 milligrams."
"global surface temperature" is not global temperature. Global temperature includes deep sea temperature and high atmosphere temeperatur. It is very easy to heat and cool air. Heating the deep ocean takes decades or longer.
Stop looking at it from a local or even surface point of view. Vertical air circulation is accelerating, this is what causes the arctic ice to close up. Cold air up north does not come from up north, it comes from high in the atmosphere, it just happens to "fall" down up north because that is where the weakest counter push "up" is.
There are dynamics here we are still looking at and learning. Surface temperatures are the thin single layer of the onion when there are many layers of the atmosphere and many layers of the oceans to look at as well.