emordnilap wrote:If a handful of percentage points is 'seriously low', then a question: at what level - high or low - is atmospheric pressure a danger to human health? I don't mean weather-wise, I mean health-wise, bodily integrity-wise.
360 mb is the point at which the human body can no longer acclimatize to the atmospheric pressure conditions and where, if any significant time is spent under such conditions, permanent damage to the body will be incurred.
It equates to 26,000 feet above sea level. Climbers call it the "death zone".
Ah, I get it now; didn't think that one through but it's pretty obvious put in those terms. What about the other way, high pressure?
Given that divers are exposed to significant pressures, the main problem from a certain pressure onward is the toxicity or other unwanted biochemical effects of the breathing gasses rather than the actual pressure itself. For example, normal air becomes a problem beyond 7 or 8 bars. But that's because of nitrogen toxicity and oxygen toxicity, not because of the "pressure". If you adapt the breathing mixture (using helium, for example) you can go to far higher pressures.
So, I guess the all-other-things-being-equal answer to your question is that, in normal air, the upper atmospheric pressure limit for humans is 7 or 8 bar.
The average temperature for the past year was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit (12.9 degrees Celsius) or 1 degree Fahrenheit above the previous recorded warmest year in 1998. It was 3.3 degrees above the average yearly temperature of the 20th century.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Looks like we might have some more snow next Wednesday, or at least a heavy frost, with air straight from the Arctic and a heat wave ten days later with Saharan air. The joys of Global Warming!!
Yeah but the date for the 2nd map is 16th February. It's easy to let the computer model run away into the future but there is no reason to suggest that it will match reality. Our weather is too chaotic at this time of year.
Certainly looks like some rough weather coming up over the next week though.
The Central England Temperature seres, which is an average over 400 years or so, shows a strange dip in the 3rd week of february. And the same thing, bizarrely, appears in Scandanavian folklore. There really is a "last blast of winter".
I'm preparing for the snow, Biff, but not bothering about the heat wave. If we do get one it will be very nice, though, and I'll just enjoy it for the short while that it will last.
