[caption id="attachment_102237" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
Protect your pets: Even on relatively cool days, the greenhouse effect turns a car’s interior into a bake-oven in a few minutes. GRAPH BY FRANK SANDERS[/caption]
Ah, it’s summer. In Nederland, the hummingbirds are humming, the moose are moosing, and the insides of cars are simmering with the greenhouse effect under the burning sun. We hear a lot about this effect these days, but what is it, exactly?
The way it works, in greenhouses and inside your automobile, is this. The sun’s visible light rays (blue, green, red) go through glass windows and hit interior surfaces. Those surfaces absorb the light; it warms them. That warmth re-radiates off those surfaces as infrared (beyond the red) rays.
Infrared (heat) rays cannot escape because window glass is opaque to them. The trapped heat builds up and turns the interior space into a bake oven.
As the graph shows, from data taken by the Stanford School of Medicine, this effect runs super-fast in cars. If the outdoor temperature is only 70 degrees, a car’s interior temperature exceeds 90 in just 10 minutes. It hits 104 in half an hour, and keeps on climbing.
Rising temperatures are uncomfortable in minutes, becoming lethal in short order. Pity any helpless, vulnerable being who is trapped in there.
Cracking windows down a bit delays the temperature rise only slightly; a car’s interior with cracked-open windows can still become a death trap in a few minutes on a warm day. Car windows need to be more than half-way down, nearly all the way open, to vent the rapidly-accumulating hot air fast enough to prevent deadly heat inside.
To avoid taking chances with accidentally cooking your best friend into a hot dog, leave vulnerable loved ones at home, or bring them with you to your destination, on warm days.
For further information, the authors can be contacted at backyardastronomy1@gmail.com.
