Cemre, meaning "fire", "ember", is held to fall first into the air, then into the water and finally into the soil, according to a calendar that begins at the end of February each year. The "falling of the cemre" also signals that Nevruz, the spring festival, is approaching.
According to the folk calendar and belief, the cemres begin to fall 5 days after the 100th day of the Kasım days.
The cemre is believed to fall into the air, the water and the soil at one-week intervals. Of the three cemres, the first falls into the air (19-20 February), the second into the water (26-27 February) and the third into the soil (5-6 March). With each cemre's fall, the air temperature rises, while a slight drop in temperature is seen between the cemres.
Thus, the cemre expresses the idea that the air warms not from below but, as it were, from the top down.
First of all, contrary to common belief and to the way the cemre is explained, the sun's rays do not heat our atmosphere directly. The Earth's surface first warms itself by absorbing the sun's rays and then heats the atmosphere. On a clear day, solar energy passing through the lower layer of the atmosphere is absorbed by the Earth's surface. As a result, the Earth's surface warms up. As the air at the surface warms, it becomes less dense than the air higher up. The warmed air rises and the cooler air sinks. The rising air expands and cools. Water vapour condenses into cloud droplets and, owing to the heat released by the phase change, warms the air. Meanwhile, the Earth emits infrared radiation, which is absorbed and re-emitted by carbon dioxide and water vapour. Since the density of the gases is lower at the Earth's surface, most of the absorption takes place in the layers close to the surface. Consequently, the lower layers of the atmosphere are heated from the bottom up.
