Pierce and Benedict's Adventure Guide to Weather By: Pierce Macfarlane and Benedict Farrell
Air Hey friendly adventurers! My name's Benedict and i'm here to talk to you about air and everything around it. Atmosphere: the Atmosphere is the air above and and around us without it, your adventure wouldn't even be able to begin. the atmosphere has five main layers, the stratosphere,mesosphere,the troposphere,the thermosphere, and the exosphere.the atmosphere helps keep in all the air, and without air there is no weather, so the atmosphere helps a lot to create weather. Convection: convection is how your lava lamp works, the hot air moves to the top of the atmosphere, and then cools down and goes to the bottom, creating a never ending cycle of moving air.
Air pressure Hey! It's Benedict again, Just here to talk to you about air pressure.Air pressure is how much air the atmosphere is pushing down on us right now like how when you go underwater you feel heavier. There are two types of air pressure, high, and low.First, there's high air pressure, now high air pressure is when there is lots of pressure on the ground where you are, High air pressure usually is on lower land, and cause for it to be hot, low air pressure is mostly found in high areas and is usually cold,thats why there's snow on the top of tall mountains!
Fronts- Warm, Cold and Stationary Hi kids! It's Adventure Guide Pierce here. We are now going to take a trip to the United States to observe something called fronts. Fronts are large air masses that are either hot or cold. Warm fronts consist of warm air. Guess what cold fronts consist of? That's right! cold air! There is one more type of front, it is called a stationary front. Stationary fronts occur when a front has stopped moving. Warm front that come from the sea normally generate in the mid pacific around the equator. Cold fronts that come from the sea normally generate in the Northern Pacific near Alaska. Larger air masses, or fronts, usually come from the sea but they can also come from the land too. Warm fronts from the land usually come from Mexico and cold fronts from the land come from Canada. I'm glad that we were able to learn about fronts together! I'll see you later to learn about currents!
Currents- Wind Hi kids! Welcome back to currents with Adventure Guide Pierce! First we will look at the wind currents. We will travel to the western hemisphere to take a look at its wind currents. First, it is important to know that wind is made by the flowing of high to low pressure areas. In global wind patterns, generate from about 30 degrees latitude and flow toward the equator. This is because the sun heats these regions most and therefore it has the lowest air pressure. Then as you can imagine, around the equator there is very little wind because there is only hot, thin air is there. As the winds move towards the equator the Coriolis effect then come into play. This is the spinning of the earth and how it causes the wind patterns to curve. After all of these factors wind currents will look something like this.
Currents- Ocean In this section of currents we will talk about ocean currents. Like wind currents, Ocean currents also depend on the sun. There are two types of Ocean currents, Wind current and currents from the heating of water by the sun. In wind currents currents will follow the path of the wind. These currents only are present and the surface of the Ocean. Deep water currents on the other hand, occur far underneath the surface. Deep water currents are made from the heating of the water. The cold water sinks and the warm water rises creating a cycle of convection called the great conveyor belt. This is the path of the great conveyor belt.
Hurricanes Hi kids! Its Adventure guide Pierce here! Right now we are going to take a look at the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes are one of the most awesome forces of nature but can also be the some of the most deadly. Hurricanes form over water when Warm air rises and the cold, low air pressure gets harnessed in the hurricane. The hurricane sucks in air kind of like a vacuum and spits out the warm air above itself. So when over sea, the hurricanes build. Over land, the hurricanes can't suck in any more low pressure, cool, moist air so it dies down and stops.
Tornadoes Hey kids, its Pierce! Now that we have learned about Hurricanes kids, we will learn about Tornadoes! Tornadoes are extremely powerful forces that form during a thunderstorm. Winds can reach up to 300 mph! Tornadoes are can tear through buildings and lift up cars! They can create paths 1 mile wide and 50 miles long! Tornadoes are more common in the windswept great plains regions of North America, this is called Tornado Alley.
water Weather I'm back! It's Benedict here to tell you about weather that creates something called, precipitation, now that is when the clouds make some forms of water come out of them, there are four types of this, precipitation. There is rain, which is when the clouds precipitate water in a normal form. hail, when frozen water balls fall from the clouds,sleet, when Ice crystals fall from the clouds,and lastly, my personal favorite, snow! Snow is when the water freezes in the clouds, but doesn't turn into those ice crystals, it turns into flurries that fall down to the ground build up, and create snow.
Clouds I'm sure you've seen a cloud before, but do you know what they are? Clouds are made up of very light ice crystals and water droplets. When it gets compact enough it release that water as rain, sleet, snow or hail. There are 4 more common type of clouds, Cumulus, Nimbostratus, Cumulonimbus, and Cirrus clouds.
Cirrus- Wispy, made of ice crystals Cumulonimbus- Large, bring thunderstorms
Nimbostratus- Thick, low, bring rain Cumulus- Looks like a pillow, brings nice weather
images of weather Adventure guide Benedict ready to let you know about more weather! On a weather map temperature can be shown using isotherms and isobars like in the diagram. Isotherms are the area that are colored in, they show you the temperature in that certain area.Isobars on the other hand are the lines that separate the regions, you can remember by relating bar to line because they are almost the same thing.Today, we are lucky that we have things like satellite images that can can show us images of the atmosphere and what's happening or about to happen, thats how scientists get their images for weather.
Meteorological instruments Yo! it's Benedict, lets learn about instruments of measurement. First, there is the barometer, the barometer measures air pressure that is in the area. there is also the anemometer, now the anemometer measures wind speed that is going past it.also there's the sling psychrometer that measures humidity. and there's also weather satellites. Some of the most helpful information about weather can be from satellite, they tell us where storms are moving and what kind of things are happening just from an outside view.
Your very own weather map!