wrote:
Fred wrote:

Just got asked this question, didn't have a quick and easy answer.

How

do you explain it?

This thread reminds me of the original explanation for malaria "bad
air". Everyone knew that he disease came from bad air wafting up from
hot swamps. It took some actual research to determine that it came from
a mosquito borne parasite.
Clearly there are lots of arm-chair (desk-chair?) explanations for why
IAS increases upon entering a thermal, but nobody *really* knows because
no experimentation has been done to figure it out. Some wise old sages
out there are certain of their explanation, and maybe they're right, or
maybe it's just bad air.
This seems like it would be a good youth-in-soaring sort of question to
solve with real science.

Shawn