Atmosphere Basics
What we call the day-to-day condition of the atmosphere (temperature, wind, precipitation) in a given place?
This common weather tool is used to measure air temperature.
What is a Thermometer?
This type of front often brings quick, heavy rain and puffy clouds when a cold air mass moves into a warm one.
What is a Cold Front?
This is one way the ocean influences weather for people living on the coast.
(Accept: Moderates temperature OR adds moisture/rain)
Shining a lamp on a pan of water is a classroom model used to demonstrate this part of the water cycle.
What is Evaporation?
Process that causes warm air to move upward because warm air is less dense?
What is Convection? (Accept: Warm air rising)
This instrument measures air pressure and helps meteorologists predict weather changes.
What is a Barometer?
This specific pressure system is usually associated with clear skies and sunny, "fair" weather.
What is a High-Pressure System?
This warm ocean current flows along the U.S. East Coast and helps keep North Carolina's winters milder.
What is the Gulf Stream?
This is the process where plants release water vapor into the air.
What is Transpiration?
When this is present at night, it acts like a blanket and usually keeps nighttime temperatures warmer.
What is Cloud Cover?
If you want to know which way the wind is blowing, you would look at this tool.
What is a Wind Vane? (Accept: Weather vane)
Because this front stays in one place for days, it often brings many days of clouds and steady precipitation.
What is a Stationary Front?
When ocean temperatures get warmer, this happens to the amount of moisture and rainfall in the atmosphere.
What is It increases?
At a particle level, adding heat energy from the sun causes water molecules to do this.
What is Move faster and spread apart?
A short, 5th-grade definition for this term is "the typical weather patterns of an area over a long period of time."
What is Climate?
If this tool's readings are decreasing (falling) over several hours, it is a sign that stormy weather or rain is likely.
What is a Barometer?
When this type of front passes through, you can expect temperatures to rise and light, steady rain to fall.
What is a Warm Front?
This is why NC's Coastal Plain has milder winters than the NC Mountains.
What is Proximity to the ocean? (Accept: The ocean warms the land)
This is the "engine" or primary source of energy that drives the entire water cycle.
What is The Sun?
This is the main reason the equator is warmer than the poles.
What is Direct Sunlight? (Accept: The angle of the sun's rays)
To show seasonal patterns of temperature and precipitation over a year, students could use these two types of graphs.
What are Line and Bar graphs?
As a cold front approaches a coastal town, this is the typical order of changes for clouds and rain.
What is Cloud cover increases, then showers/thunderstorms begin?
Hurricanes need these three specific conditions to form.
What are Warm water, low pressure, and high winds?
These are two reasons why a puddle dries faster on a sunny, windy day than a cool, still day.
What are Higher energy (heat) and wind moving water vapor away?