spicy weather stresses everyone and everything . A swampy afternoon taxes your trunk , strains your family and gondola , and can wreak mayhem on base like power grid and roadway . It stand to reason that the hot Dominicus can apply accent to the Earth , too , and a studypublished todayinNature Geosciencesuggests that rapid temperature cycles can stress the faces of mountainside to their break point , leading to potentially dangerous rockfalls .
The study , conducted in Yosemite National Park over a three - and - a - half year period by research worker at Yosemite and the U.S. Geological Survey ’s Landslide Hazards Program , seek to answer the interrogation of why suddenrockfalls can occurfor lack of an obvious causal agency , such as heavy pelting or earthquakes .
They close that daily temperature cycle during certain periods of the class are enough to aggravate " scale " fractures in the surface layer of a granite cliff — perchance to the point of complete failure . We saw adramatic exampleof one such rockfall in summer 2015 , when the green ’s iconic Half Dome lost 5 million pound of granite . This video from Yosemite National Park gives an overview of rockfalls .
scale is a much less gentle process in nature than it is in skin care . It ’s a type of wearing where the aerofoil of a rock crevice and peel off away in layers due to weathering . The subject field line up that a grow exfoliation layer on a mountainside in Yosemite National Park twist in and out on hot good afternoon and days that saw big temperature range ; that is , days with affectionate afternoon high-pitched temperatures and cool nighttime gloomy temperature .
During the study , the scientist measured temperature , sunlight , and the sizing of the wisecrack in one of these layer to determine how much of a use daily temperatures played in weathering the mountainside . They found that the nifty outward deformation , or enlargement , of the stone layers occurred during the mid - afternoon minute during peak heating , and the greatest inward deformation of the careen , or condensation , accept place during the coldest part of the morning . The deformation was n’t tiny , either — they discover that the bed can expand and contract up to one centimeter during the course of a day .
The vast legal age of rockfalls around the earthly concern hap as a solution of triggers like precipitation ( the possible campaign of the 2015 Half Dome rockfall ) or seismicity , but the writer point out that the remaining 15 percent are either heat induced or happen without account . Many of these result occur during the warmest part of the twenty-four hours during the warmest parts of the twelvemonth , bring further credence to their findings . A deeper understanding of these sudden events can help scientist well understand this phenomenon , possibly helping keep hoi polloi safe from sudden come down rocks in the future .
