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Letter: Siphons and Sarez

Published 29 September 2001

From Nick Sharp

Alisdair Sutherland suggests siphoning off the lake that is building up on
Mount Pinatubo
(25 August, p 55).

I suggested doing this in 1999 in a similar situation, namely the devastating
threat posed by Sarez lake in Tajikistan. As I wrote to you then, “If I remember
my physics correctly, the siphon would stop working once the lake height is
lower than about nine metres below the top of the siphon tube, at which point a
vacuum would develop there.”

And—could we have an update on what happened at Sarez?

Sydney

Issue no. 2310 published 29 September 2001

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