Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Temperature Of Which Is +0.5 Degrees, Far From Placing Themselves
Below The Stratum At 4 Degrees, Can Only Find Their Hydrostatic
Equilibrium Above That Stratum.
They will descend lower only when
their temperature is augmented 3 or 4 degrees by the contact of strata
less cold.
If water in cooling continued to condense uniformly to the
freezing point, there would be found, in very deep lakes and basins
having no communication with each other (whatever the latitude of the
place), a stratum of water, the temperature of which would be nearly
equal to the maximum of refrigeration above the freezing point, which
the lower regions of the ambient atmosphere annually attain. Hence it
is probable, that, in the plains of the torrid zone, or in the valleys
but little elevated, the mean heat of which is from 25.5 to 27
degrees, the temperature of the bottom of the lakes can never be below
21 or 22 degrees. If in the same zone the ocean contain at depths of
seven or eight hundred fathoms, water the temperature of which is at 7
degrees, that is to say, twelve or thirteen degrees colder than the
maximum of the heat* of the equinoctial atmosphere over the sea, I
think it must be considered as a direct proof of a submarine current,
carrying the waters of the pole towards the equator. (* It is almost
superfluous to observe that I am considering here only that part of
the atmosphere lying on the ocean between 10 degrees north and 10
degrees south latitude.
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