Frequently, after cold frontal passage, a strong NW wind blows across the open marsh and through our back yard. With ambient temps still well above freezing, the surface of the water in our concrete bird bath begins to freeze. Venturi? Bernoulli? Just heat transfer ("wind chill")?
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Did the temperatures drop to freezing before this happened (even if ambient went back up before the water froze)? How are you measuring ambient -- for example, are you using a weather service's reading? – Nat Dec 27 '20 at 15:16
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1Is the bird bath in an open area so that it can see the sky? is it under a tree or porch where the sky is blocked? A 40 F wind will tend to prevent the water from freezing, not causing it to freeze. I think the radiation to the sky is causing the ice. It is the same reason that frost occurs on the ground even when the air temperature is above freezing (but you may not see frost under a tree because radiation to the sky is blocked). – JohnHoltz Dec 27 '20 at 15:38
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The temperature did not drop to freezing until several hours later. My "ambient" is based on an outside thermometer that closely agrees with weather service reading 3-4 miles away. Bird bath is located in an open area though shaded this time of year. – tgj Dec 28 '20 at 15:17
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The answers to "Why can't the ocean be frozen by blowing on it?" may be helpful. – David Bailey Sep 25 '23 at 23:30
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It is due to evaporation, mass transfer from the liquid to the air, not heat transfer. Without wind there is a layer of air next to the liquid surface that tends to become saturated thereby by lowing evaporation. With wind, the liquid surface is constantly exposed to less humid air. Evaporation is driven by the difference between the vapor pressure of the liquid at its temperature and the partial pressure of water vapor in the air which decreases with decreasing humidity. This is a mass transfer process, not a heat transfer process. In addition to mass transfer, heat transfer can also take place based on the difference in temperature between the liquid surface and the air. In this case mass transfer dominates.
Other, less extreme examples of evaporative cooling include: wind chill, cooling of effluent from a power plant condenser using a cooling tower, a sling psychrometer, adiabatic saturation in an evaporative cooler used in low humidity hot regions (e.g., New Mexico), and how a fan cools you.
See a thermodynamics book such as one by Sonntag and Van Wylen, and Transport Phenomena by Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot.
John Darby
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Surely evaporative cooling is a significant factor. The wind carries away water molecules that have evaporated from the water, so not as many return to the water (through collisions with air molecules) than without the wind. Therefore the net evaporation rate is enhanced, and so is the evaporative cooling.
The cooling occurs because only water molecules with considerably more than the mean kinetic energy can escape from the water surface, so lowering the mean kinetic of the remaining water molecules, and hence the temperature.
This effect can be demonstrated with a fan blowing air over a shallow bowl of water. The fall in water temperature is not huge, but if the water temperature and the air temperature are only a few degrees above freezing in the first place, the water might just be made to freeze.
Philip Wood
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A great many effects and mechanisms can be conjectured. How about a calculation involving the latent heat and the evaporation rate? The credibility of the answer rests in part on whether the required evaporation is, say, $1,\text{mm}^3$ vs. $10^6,\text{mm}^3$. – Chemomechanics Dec 28 '20 at 18:56
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@Chemomechanics. It's a reasonable request, but one that I can't fulfil at the moment. No laboratory and no time to search for data about wind-enhanced evaporation rates. My answer is largely based on a well known demonstration: blowing air at room temperature over ether at room temperature in an open beaker resting on a surface wet with water. The water freezes in less than a minute. Ether is more volatile (has a higher vapour pressure at a given temperature) than water, so the effect was quicker and more dramatic than it would have been with water alone. Nonetheless... – Philip Wood Dec 28 '20 at 19:21
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1For water at 0°C, the latent heat of vaporization and fusion is about $2500,\text{MJ/kg}$ and $300,\text{MJ/kg}$, respectively. Thus, we can freeze a thickness $t$ of water near 0°C by evaporating a thickness of ~$0.1t$, as the densities are similar. There must be studies out there on evaporative forced convection and its capacity to freeze water (extremely relevant in the context of droplets on windshields and frost damage in the citrus industry, for example), but I haven't yet found them. – Chemomechanics Dec 29 '20 at 17:42
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Did you measure the temperature of the concrete bird bath? It may be that it is still below freezing temperature from the night before. Earth heats up and cools down much faster than the atmosphere. During days of no sunshine or cold winter nights, ground radiates heat to the atmosphere, and can cool down to temperatures below that of the air surrounding it. So even if your thermometer shows 40F, it may be well below freezing point near the ground, or in this case, your concrete bid bath.
AlphaLife
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It is possible for outdoor water to freeze at ambient air temperatures above 0°C (32°F) if either the sky temperature for radiative cooling or the wet-bulb temperature for evaporative cooling is cold enough. For example, snowmaking is possible when the wet-bulb temperature is below -2.5°C, e.g. at an ambient (dry-bulb) temperature of 3°C and 20% relative humidity.
Ice formation in a backyard bird bath near Boulder at air temperatures above 4°C has been observed by a US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Scientist and attributed to evaporative cooling. This is consistent with the 1500 m psychrometric chart, e.g. the wet bulb temperature would be -2°C at ambient air temperature of 4°C and 30% humidity.
David Bailey
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