A convection cell, once started is self sustaining and generally isn’t bigger than a few miles. No it wasn’t a chimney but the air was constrained by the surrounding air which was constrained by the walls of the basin. I calculated if I recall correcty 1/1000ths of the earth’s atmosphere was packed into that basin because of the increase in pressure/density of the air at the bottom.
Sigh, Your calculation assumes that the basin gently fills with no turbulence. There would be all sorts of things going on in this basin. let’s go to Wiki about thunderstorms. They often arise from thermals–differential heating. but without the moisture, they can’t produce rain. The desciccated basin had no moisture to offer for rain (does that remind one of something said in the Scripture?). Secondly the rising air column over such an area with now moisture pouring in from the east would produce some clouds, which would then produce differential heating and thermals.
The average thunderstorm has a 24 km (15 mi) diameter. Depending on the conditions present in the atmosphere, each of these three stages take an average of 30 minutes.[10]
### Developing stage
The first stage of a thunderstorm is the cumulus stage or developing stage. During this stage, masses of moisture are lifted upwards into the atmosphere. The trigger for this lift can be solar illumination, where the heating of the ground produces thermals, or where two winds converge forcing air upwards, or where winds blow over terrain of increasing elevation. The moisture carried upward cools into liquid drops of water due to lower temperatures at high altitude, which appear as cumulus clouds. As the water vapor condenses into liquid, latent heat is released, which warms the air, causing it to become less dense than the surrounding, drier air. The air tends to rise in an updraft through the process of convection (hence the term convective precipitation). This process creates a low-pressure zone within and beneath the forming thunderstorm. In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 500 million kilograms of water vapor are lifted into the Earth’s atmosphere.[11] Thunderstorm - Wikipedia
I bolded the part about the latent heat re-inforcing the updraft, which then becomes self-sustaining. The generally rising air, some cloud formation, differential heating would all combine to produce rain. I can’t believe I am having to debate this issue. Nature is nonlinear and that is what creates thunderstorms. Indeed, he convection cell was the first thing chaos/nonlinear dynamics was discovered in. Go look up Lorenz.
Estimates vary on the speed by which the Atlantic waters shot into the empty basin.
this guy says max was 40m/s. That is 89 mph
This fellow says the Med went up a few meters per day. filling atthe rate of 90 sv. --that is 90 million cubic meters of water per second. the speed of the water depends on the size of the hole.
Computational fluid dynamics simulations of the Zanclean catastrophic flood of the Mediterranean (5.33 Ma) - ScienceDirect
I go into this because one could start the rain by the turbulence started at the Gibraltar strait and have it move eastward, to create the rain. A numerical simulaton of the influx, using a very small opening, which is not deep enough to bring in the ostracod mentioned by Hsu, has the water moving at 100 m/s
that is 200 mph, which would certainly stir up the atmosphere, causing turbulence, at the east, and once a convection cell started, it’s outwash would force further off areas to go down, and after that even further areas it would force air to rise quicker than the average.
I mention the benthonic ostracod. It lives deep and needs a deep entry to the Med, and that means that the flood was quicker than Perianez and Abril suggest. They are generally just over a year with one case at about 4 years.
"These earliest Pliocene strata contain a benthic ostracod fauna, which could only live in ocean bottom below 1,000 m. The associated benthonic Foraminifera are likewise indicative of a deep marine environment of deposition. The fact that of the deep-swimming planktonic genus Spheroidinellopsis is the dominant (up to 90%) microfauna lends further credence to the concept of a deep Mediterranean in the earliest Pliocene." ~ K. J. Hsu, W. B. F. Ryan and M. B. Cita, “Late Miocene Desiccation of the Mediterranean,” Nature, 242, March 23, 1973, p. 240
You are thinking of this as a slight rise in the sea level , but it is far far more than that.
Further counter clockwise eddies in the sea surface would also help get rain started.
The average rise per day means that these storms would have a constant supply of newly uplifed moisture laden air with which to form another convection cell
Edited to add a quote from this fluid simulation paper above: "“Simulations with a simple zero-dimensional model indicated that the Zanclean flood of the Mediterranean Sea, after the Messinian salinity crisis, was a process considerably fast, involving a time scale of the order of one year.” R. Perianez and J. M. Abril, “Computational fluid dynamics simulations of the Zanclean catastrophic flood of the Mediterranean (5.33 Ma),” Paleaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 424(215), p. 59
The Bible says a year for Noahs flood give or take. No Mesopotamian flood could possibly last that long, and it takes anyone floating on it in the wrong direction. We have here a flood that matches the description of Noah’s flood, and everyone hates it. We have here the Bible talking about a geography as it was at the time of this flood, and everyone hates that as well. The curses point to Adam and eve as having smaller brains because , well, pain in childbirth already existed by 1.8 my year ago, so cursing a Neolithic eve with what she already had, makes no sense to me. Do we christians beleive any fact should match anything in the Scripture? I sometimes wonder.
