Do you know how splashing a little water on your skin helps keep you cool on a hot day? Scientists call this an endothermic process that takes heat from your skin and transfers it to the water that evaporates into the atmosphere. Our bodies tap into that physical phenomena when we sweat.
Because energy must be conserved, that water vapor carries heat which is released when it condenses. Unlike evaporative cooling, we don’t notice the reverse process (exothermic) because it usually happens in our daily lives when the air is extremely humid and starts to cool. For instance, when you step out off the shower, water condenses on available surfaces and heats them. But compared to the heat from the shower, the effect is small and we mostly notice the need to wipe water drops off the mirror.
The effect is more noticeable when it happens high up in the atmosphere on a summer day. As moist air is lifted, it cools and the pressure decreases. At a certain level, that causes some of the water vapor to condense, which produces a tiny bit of heat. That heat makes the air that just lost some of its humidity warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, so that air rises some more. The result is a feedback loop where water condenses and warms leading to air rising and more water condensing.
All sort of other effects happen as that feedback loop cycles:
- The condensed water forms droplets that fall out of the sky and become rain.
- As air rises in the storm, it leaves a low pressure area. Surrounding air rushes in producing wind.
- Molecules rubbing against each other strips away electrons. When the electrical imbalance between the storm and the ground (or other parts of the sky) increases enough, the world’s largest static discharges cause lightning and thunder.
Eventually all the water in the air evaporates and the storm breaks up and the sky clears again.
Societies have storms too. When people release pent up frustration, it tends to pull in other people. Shared grievances feel good and so a group that forms on that basis tends to seek further outrage. It’s a feedback loop that draws in more anger and that anger produces more outrage. Groups splinter and splinter groups grow as they prod each other. Catharsis, even at the cost of harming others, feels good and even better within a group of similar people.
How do social storms end? Sometimes in revolution and civil war as violence becomes the only thinkable answer to our anger. Or we find an external enemy. Or maybe we just get tired of being angry all the time. One can dream.