Dana Mathewson

Her story puts many Greek tragedies to shame.

The Titanic was a beauty destined for greatness, but the fates were against her. On a cold April night in 1912, she fell from grace, sinking to her watery grave in the icy northern Atlantic.

But as is the case with any story, there’s more to this tale.

Although an iceberg famously led to the Titanic’s downfall, a background character — the weather — set the stage for a series of unfortunate events that ultimately culminated into a most historic disaster.

"The reason why we're all fascinated by the Titanic today, to a certain extent, is because her story is a classic tragedy," said Tim Maltin, Titanic author and historian.

According to Maltin, the tragedy that befell the Titanic may have been caused by unusual atmospheric conditions.

"The weather, the night the Titanic sank, was absolutely extraordinary," he said. "It was one of the calmest and clearest nights in history on the North Atlantic."

That fateful night was on April 14, 1912. The Titanic was en route from Southampton, England to New York City, passing through the waters about 460 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.

According to Maltin, in this particular part of the Atlantic Ocean, the freezing waters of the Labrador Current flowed into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.

"This created what we call a thermal inversion, where you have much warmer air, which had been heated by the Gulf Stream, above very cold air among the icebergs," he said.

Normally, warm air sits near the Earth's surface as the sun heats the ground, gradually becoming cooler at higher altitudes. So when the opposite occurs, you have a layer of cold air which gets trapped below warmer air higher up. This is known as a thermal inversion.

The thermal inversion on the night the Titanic sank essentially turned the layer of cold air near the sea into a lens, which bent light downward. This caused Titanic's officers and lookouts to be able to see an extraordinarily long distance that night.

"Although the high pressure kept the air unusually clear, the abnormally long distance to the horizon meant that light was scattered by the molecules in the path of vision, creating a haze caused by the scattering of light," Maltin said.

According to Maltin, this haze effect at the horizon is an indicator that a cold water mirage, known as a "superior mirage", is present. Unlike desert mirages, which are formed by warm air, superior mirages are formed by cold air.

While desert mirages pull the sky down below the horizon — and create the illusion of pools of water on the ground — superior mirages appear to raise the horizon into the sky.

 

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