Properties
When a cold air mass collides into a warm air mass. Is known for sudden, violent weather followed by clear skies.
What is a cold front?
Continental Polar
The lowest layer, so it is the most dense air and has the highest air pressure. This is where all weather and most clouds occur.
What is the troposphere?
When a warm air mass overtakes a cold air mass. Is known for extended precipitation and warm, humid air.
What is a warm front?
These are fast moving winds high in the atmosphere that are responsible for moving air masses
What are jet streams?
What is convection (currents)?
Cold and warm air masses meet, but neither can move the other, creating a "stalemate." Can stall out and bring much rain over a few days where it happens.
What is a stationary front?
These Air masses come down from Alaska, or down from Maine
Maritime Polar
This process of heat transfer is how energy from the sun gets to the earth
The 4th layer up that deflects some of the sun's energy and causes the northern lights, or aurora borealis.
What is the thermosphere?
When a cold front overtakes a warm front, trapping warm air in between two cold air masses. Often happens in snow storms in the Northern U.S. Often creates cold precipitation and severe weather.
What is an occluded front?
These air masses often contribute to tropical storms off the Gulf of Mexico
Maritime Tropical
Near a large body of water, 1) the wind pattern during the day and 2) the wind pattern at night.
What is 1) a sea breeze and 2) a land breeze?
Challenge: This is the magnetic field generated by the molten core of the earth that protects life from harmful solar radiation
What is the magnetosphere?
When rising warm air lifts air off the ground and is replaced by a lot of cool air from around it. These rotate counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere
What is a cyclone?
Temperature, humidity, and density.