The continuous movement of water between the atmosphere, land, sea, and living things.
What is the water cycle?
Any form of water that falls from clouds
What is precipitation?
A collection of small water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air
What is a cloud?
A short-term state including atmosphere, temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, and visibility
What is weather?
Cool ocean currents
What lowers coastal air temps?
The condition of the Earth at a certain time and place
What is weather?
All four kinds of precipitation (in any order)
What is rain, snow, sleet, and hail?
Warm air mass rises over a cool air mass or cool air slides under a mass of warm air pushing the warm air upward
What is frontal lifting?
Where two air masses meet
What is a front?
Warm ocean currents
What raises coastal air temperatures?
A measure of how hot or cold something is.
What is temperature?
The force of air molecules pushing on an area
What is air pressure?
An obstacle like a mountain range forces a mass of air upward
What is orographic lifting?
Cold fronts, warm fronts and stationary fronts
What are the three types of fronts?
Stormy weather comes from this pressure system
What is a low pressure zone?
Amount of water vapor in the air
What is humidity?
Moving air caused by uneven heating of Earth's surface by the sun.
What is wind?
Water vapor that condenses near the Earth's surface
What is fog?
Areas of different air pressure
What are pressure systems?
Clear and nice weather in this pressure system
What is a high-pressure zone?
Amount of water vapor in the air to reach saturation (100%)
What is relative humidity?
The measure of the transparency of the atmosphere.
What is visibility?
Air must be cooled to its --- and must have a solid surface to condense
What is a dew point?
A jet streams (polar or subtropical)
What moves air west to east by creating strong storms?
Global winds create these currents
What are ocean surface currents?