Poetry by Jeff Klein
Consider the Hadley Cell,
In which warm and moist air rises; travels
From the equator to a latitude
Of roughly 30 degrees
North or South, Texas or Chile.
The air, then cold and dry, falls to Earth
Most all known deserts on Earth
Are the result of this square cell.
Like where it never rains, in Chile.
However, if one travels,
Say, below about eighty five degrees
(though one seldom has the latitude
In life to find such latitude),
One could find the driest place on Earth.
Drier (and colder) by degrees
than the air in the Hadley Cell
as it falls, ending its travels
Far from the equator, say Chile.
Indeed the story doesn't end in Chile
At that dry middle latitude...
The air that has fallen now travels
Along the surface of the Earth
Creating the secondary Ferrell Cell
Rising again around sixty degrees
(Oddly enough, at sixty degrees
One is almost still in Chile,
The smallest country with more than one air cell?)
The air, seeming warm and moist by this latitude,
Begins again to rise above Earth
Entering the last leg of its travels
And at this point in its travels
Where temps fall below -100 degrees
(Like Vostok, the coldest place on Earth--
Colder than any of the Andes' peaks in Chile),
Here, in the extreme latitude
Do we find the Polar Cell.
And so air moves across Earth, across Chile
It would seeem, and travels by degrees
With no sentience, the latitude of a single cell.
Jeff Klein grew up in south Florida and managed his way to New England for college and graduate school. This past austral summer, he put that knowledge to work washing dishes in Antarctica. Jeff now resides in Ithaca, New York
Image: Clouds over Mt Discovery, Colin Campbell
Fri 10 Feb 2006