Transcript Climate! - Valhalla High School

Climate!
How is Climate different than Weather?
Weather
Climate
What Factors Affect the Climate of a
Region?
• List here…
Orographic Effects
• Orographic Effects –windward and leeward side
of mountain ranges have different climates
• Why? Air mass rises and cools adiabatically
(without any energy input), clouds form, and thus
it rains. Air cools due to expansion…as it comes
down the other side, warms adiabatically due to
compression and dries out.
• Rate of cooling is known as the lapse rate
Windward and Leeward Side
Ocean Currents
• Stream of water consisting of the same
temperatures, circulating throughout the
ocean basin
• Warm currents- warm air above, bring warm
weather
• Cool currents- cool air above, bring cool
weather
• See esrt p4
Winds
Planetary Winds caused by the Coriolis Effect
See Esrt p14
Monsoon- period of severe rains, occurs in
Southern Asia, are the resulting of shifting
winds. Warming summer continent causes
winds to blow from sea inland instead of out
to sea.
Shifting winds bring rain
El Nino, La Nina
• Predictable Weather Events resulting from
movement of ocean currents and winds off
the coast of South America and North America
• El Nino- warming event-warm mass of ocea
water moves and spreads eastward along the
coast of South America. Brings with it warm
air, full of thunderstorm capability and severe
rains.
Continued…
• These disturbances offset the Jet Stream and
thus global weather patterns
• Results in warmer, wet winters for the US and
places like India and Australia dry out.
• La Nina results in the opposite effect
El Nino Animation
• http://esminfo.prenhall.com/science/geoanim
ations/animations/26_NinoNina.html
• On click
El Nino Watch issued…
Storm Tracks
• Storms move west to east with the prevailing
winds
• Hurricanes typically move west off the coast
of Africa ,then north to north east
• This is the path of a storm
Typical Winter Storm Tracks
Typical Hurricane Tracks (NASA Visible
Earth- 2005 Season)
Latitude and Elevation
• As the distance from the equator increases, the
temperature of a location decreases
• See same effect as elevation increases (
mountains)
• Climatographs show temperature and
precipitation for a particular location. Warmest
temperatures are in the summer months in the
northern hemisphere and coldest in the summer
months for the southern hemisphere
• P/Ep ratio also classifies climate in terms of arid
vs humid (over 1.2 is humid, and under 0.4 is
arid)
P/Ep Ratio Values
P/Ep Ratio Range
Type of Climate
Over 1.2
0.8 TO 1.2
0.4 TO 0.8
LESS THAN 0.4
HUMID
SUBHUMID
SEMIARID
ARID