RYAN ARIFIN ARYAN BHATNAGAR
The atmosphere is very important for the Earth! The weather and wind you see everyday all happen in the atmosphere!
Without the atmosphere, Earth would be completely different.
If you think weather was enough for the atmosphere, think again! The atmosphere protects us from flying rocks and debris in space. Just look at the moon!
The moon is covered in craters because it has no atmosphere to protect it- ouch! Lucky for us, meteors that head towards Earth burn up in the atmosphere. Shooting stars is the atmosphere in action!
Think of Earth in space like being on a beach. If you stay out too long, you'll get sunburned! Similarly, if Earth stayed in space, it'll get sunburned too!
Ultra violet rays are what causes sunburns and luckily, Earth has really good sunscreen. The atmosphere prevents unhealthy amounts of ultraviolet radiation from reaching the surface, helping life live!
The atmosphere blankets Earth in layers. The fourth layer is the thermosphere. This is where the northern lights occur because of the sun!.
The next layer is the stratosphere. The air here is much more calmer and is where airplanes fly. This is also where the ozone layer is.
The layer above the stratosphere is the mesosphere. This is where all the space rocks burn up! The layer we live in is called the troposphere. This is where all the weather happens.
The Sun is Earth's father. Everything on Earth is possible because of the Sun's energy!
The Sun causes currents!
Without the Sun, you will not be having a fun time! The Sun allows life!
The Sun causes wind!
The Sun causes weather!
All across the world, different areas have different air pressures. This is because different areas get different amounts of Sun.
When you are enjoying Summer, the other side of the world is dealing with Winter! That's a huge difference of sunlight!
The different amounts of sunlight in places causes convection currents in the atmosphere as well as the ocean! Through convection, winds and currents are created!
The warmer the air is, the lower the pressure is. Think of pressure like ice cream on a cone. When it is hotter, the ice cream starts to melt and the molecules of ice cream are further apart.
Many different weather patterns come with high pressure.
Areas of high pressure are called anti cyclones. Shown on a weather map by "H"! High pressure usually means sunny and dry days to enjoy!
The colder the air is, the higher the pressure.
Remember it like this: the higher you are, the colder it is. In other words, the colder it is, the higher the pressure is!
Areas of Low pressure are called cyclones.
Low pressure areas are usually associated with stormy weather, clouds, rain and strong winds.
Shown on a weather map by "L"!
The Earth rotating counter clockwise on its axis creates the Coriolis Effect. The Coriolis Effect is what causes cyclones to spin counter clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Coriolis Effect is also what causes anti cyclones to spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere!
Have you ever thrown a ball up and expected it to come down straight to you, but it goes off a little to the side?
Wind is made by different air pressures on earth.
Wind is air moving from areas of high pressure to areas of less air pressure.
As the sun heats up the surface we live on, the atmosphere gets hotter too! Some parts of the world receive direct rays of sunlight from the sun all year and are always warm.
Other places receive indirect rays of sunlight, so the weather is colder.
These are wind currents!
Warm air, which is less dense than cold air, rises. Then cool air moves in and replaces the rising warm air, Forming wind currents!
The equator gets the Sun's direct rays. Here, air is heated and rises, leaving low pressure areas behind. Moving to about thirty degrees north and south of the equator, the warm air from the equator begins to cool and sink.
Between thirty degrees latitude and the equator, most of the cooling sinking air moves back to the equator. The rest of the air flows toward the poles.
The trade winds are air movements toward the equator.They are warm, steady breezes that blow almost continuously.
The Coriolis Effect makes the trade winds appear to be curving to the west, whether they are traveling to the equator from the south or north hemispheres.
The doldrums are an area of calm weather. The trade winds coming from the south and the north meet near the equator. These trade winds Create upward winds as they are heated, so there are no surface winds.
Fun Fact: The word Doldrum is fun to say.
Between thirty and sixty degrees latitude, the winds that move toward the poles appear to curve to the east. Because winds are named from the direction in which they originate, these winds are called prevailing westerlies.
Prevailing westerlies in the Northern Hemisphere cause many of the weather movements across the United States and Canada.
In the Northern Hemisphere, westerlies spiral to the right.
In the Southern Hemisphere they spiral to the left!
At about sixty degrees latitude in both hemispheres, the prevailing westerlies join with the polar easterlies to reduce upward motion. The polar easterlies form when the atmosphere over the poles cools.
This cool air then sinks and spreads over the surface. As the air flows away from the poles, it is turned to the west by the Coriolis effect.
jet stream is a fast flowing, river of air found in the atmosphere at around 12 km above the surface of the Earth. They form at the boundaries of air masses with many differences in temperature
Because of the Coriolis Effect, the streams flow west to east, moving kind of like a wave at lower speeds than that of the actual wind within the flow.
On a warm summer day along the coast, the different heating of land and sea creates local winds called sea breezes.
As air above the land surface is heated by the Sun. it begins to rise because of heating faster than the air above the sea. To replace the rising air, cooler air is drawn in from the sea. This is the sea breeze, and can create nice cooling on hot summer afternoons.
A land breeze occurs at night, when the land cools faster than the sea. In this, The air above the sea is warmer than the air above the land. Heat rises, pulling in air from the cooler land surface.
Have you ever lost your hat or your ball while you were playing on the beach?
Then you know that the sea doesn't stay still! If you didn't get your item back, it’s probably on it's way to the other side of the world!
There are a number of ocean currents found around the Earth. A current is like a river within the ocean, flowing from one place to another. These currents are caused by differences in temperature, differences in salinity, and by wind. Currents are responsible for the movement of the water found in Earth’s oceans.
The water at the ocean surface is moved primarily bywinds that blow in a certain patterns because of the earth's spin and the coriolis effect. winds are able to move the top 400 meters of the ocean creating surface ocean currents,
surface ocean currents flow in a regulr pattern but the are all not the same. Some currents are deep and narrow, other currents are shallow and wide.
Deep water currents, also called thermohaline circulation, are found below 400 meters and make up about 90% of the ocean. Like surface currents, gravity plays a role in the creation of deep water currents but these are mainly caused by density differences in the water.
Have you ever played in the snow, rain, sleet, or even getting hit by hail.
Rain are droplets of water falling from cloudsin the skythat are bigger than 0.5 mm. Droplets of water that are about 0.2mm to 0.5mm big are called drizzle Rain is a kind ofprcipitation. Precipitation is any kind of water that falls from clouds in the sky, like rain, Hail, Sleet and snow Rain is part of the Water Cycle.
sleet is just rain drops that freeze into ice pellets before reaching the ground. Sleet usually bounces when hitting a surface and does not stick to objects.
is a lump of ice that falls out of a storm cloud.
have you ever played outside in snow
now is formed when water vaporgoes under deposition, which is when water vapor changes directly to ice without first becoming a liquid, high in the atmosphere at a temperature of less than 32째F and then falls to the ground.
A weather front is the boundary where two masses of air with different air pressures and temperatures collide. Fronts cause all kinds of weather!
There are four types of fronts: warm fronts, cold fronts, stationary fronts, and occluded fronts.
A warm front is when a slowly moving warm air mass collides with a slowly moving cold air mass. The cold air has Higher pressure, causing the warm air to rise. This usually causes clouds, rain, and storms.
Even it is a warm front, it's not necessarily warm!
The symbol for a warm front on a weather map is:
A cold front is created when a fast moving cold air mass runs into a slowly moving air mass.
As we know, the cold air sinks underneath the warm air. As the warm air rises, it cools. It becomes cold enough for the water in the air to become liquid water!
The weather at a cold front all depends on the water vapor in the air!
The symbol for a cold front on a weather map is:
Because cold fronts move fast, they cause very fast weather changes. Strong winds and thunderstorms are usually at cold fronts. If there is enough water in the warm air, heavy rain or even snow might fall.
Sometimes cold and warm air masses meet, but neither has the force to move each other.
The two air masses face each other in a "standoff". The front that's created is called a stationary front!
Where the warm and cold air meet, water in the air forms into rain, snow, fog, or clouds. The symbol for a stationary front on a weather map is:
A stationary front can stay over an area for several days!
Occluded fronts are the most complex weather situation. It is when a warm air mass is caught between two cooler air masses.
The cooler air moves beneath the warm air and pushes it upwards. The two cooler air masses even mix!
The warm air is actually cut off, or occluded, from the ground!
The weather symbol for an occluded front on the weather map is:
As the warm air cools and the water in the air condenses, the weather becomes cloudy and rainy.
Hurricanes use use warm, moist air as fuel. That is why they form only over warm ocean waters near the equator. The warm, moist air over the ocean rises upward from near the surface, causing an area of lower air pressure below.
Air from surrounding areas with higher air pressure pushes in to the low pressure area. That air becomes warm and moist and rises. As the warm air continues to rise, the surrounding air swirls in to take its place. As the warmed, moist air rises and cools off, the water in the air forms clouds. The "conveyor belt" is fed by the ocean's heat and water evaporating from the surface.
Because of the Coriolis effect, storms in the northern hemisphere spin counterclockwise and the southern hemisphere vice versa. As the storm system rotates faster and faster, an eye forms in the center. It is very calm and clear in the eye, with very low air pressure. Higher pressure air from above flows down into the eye.
Tornados are violently spinning winds in the form of a funnel shape They are usually created by a super thunderstorm. During the storm cold air and warm air combine in a set pattern: the cold air drops as the warm air rises. The warm air eventually twists into a spiral and forms the funnel cloud that we all know as a tornado!.
The formation of a tornado follows a clear set of steps. 1.there is a change in wind direction and an increase in wind speed. This change happens at an increasing altitude and creates an invisible horizontal spinning effect in the lower atmosphere. 2. rising air within the thunderstorm’s updraft tilts the rotating air from horizontal to vertical. 3. an area of rotation, 3-10 km wide is contained within the storm. This is where the strongest tornadoes form. Then a lower cloud base in the center of the storm becomes a rotating wall cloud. This area can be nearly rain-free. 4. a tornado develops and starts to wreak its destruction.
Scary!
he dew point is condenses into liquid water. the temperature where water vapour condenses into liquid.
A THERMOMETER measures the air temperature. A BAROMETER measures air pressure. A SLING PSYCHROMETER measures relative humidity, using the cooling effect of evaporation. A RAIN GAUGE measures the amount of rain that has fallen over a specific time period. A WIND VANE is an instrument that determines the direction from which the wind is blowing. An ANEMOMETER measures wind speed. WEATHER MAPS indicate atmospheric conditions above a large portion of the Earth's surface. A HYGROMETER measures the water vapor content of air or the humidity. A WEATHER BALLOON measures weather conditions higher up in the atmosphere. A COMPASS is a navigational instrument for finding directions. WEATHER SATELLITES are used to photograph and track large-scale air movements.
Work T-Chart Ryan
● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Atmosphere Convection High and Low Pressure Hurricanes Tornados Sun and Sun's Energy Weather Maps
Aryan
Dew Point Instruments used Ocean Currents Types Of PREcipitation Wind currents Types of Clouds Isothem and isobar How scientists get images