Weather Project
By Marissa Wilkinson
What heats up and cools off faster, land or water?
Land heats up and cools off faster, because it absorbs more heat and solar radiation while water reflects most solar radiation that reaches its surface.
Weather vs Climate
Weather and climate are different! Weather is the day to day conditions of a particular place at a time, while climate is the average conditions of a place over a long period of time. Climate can be used to predict the weather in a very long time because of information recorded on the average conditions.
Radiation vs Convection
Radiation and convection are also different - radiation is heat transfer through light while convection is heat transfer through a liquid or gas.
Tornadoes
Tornadoes are formed when different temperatures and humidity meet. They tend to occur in flat, dry land like in Tornado Alley and can be very strong and destructive. The Fujita-Pearson Tornado Scale is used to measure the strength of a tornado.
Winds
Trade Winds / Westerlies
In the Northern Hemisphere, warm air around the equator rises, flowing north towards the pole. This air is deflected to the right, cooling it and making it descend. Now they will blow from the northeast to the southwest, back toward the equator. A similar wind pattern occurs in the Southern hemisphere. These are wet winds.
Polar Winds / Easterlies
These dry winds originate from the North and South poles. Frigid air in the water sinks toward the ground creating a high pressure area at the poles. At the same time warm air is rising creating low pressure areas. Winds are created as they move from the high pressure to low pressure areas. These winds blow from the East to the West.
High pressure systems / cold fronts
High pressure systems bring cold and dry weather.
Occluded vs Stationary Fronts
An occluded front is when a cold front overtakes a warm front, where the cold front is moving faster than the warm front, making part of the cold front reach part of the warm front more quickly than the rest. A stationary front is a pair of air masses where neither is strong enough to replace the other, usually not moving.
Low pressure systems / warm fronts
Low pressure systems bring warm and wet weather.