Show:
Making Weather (Causes)
Understanding Weather (Analysis)
Weather Systems
Weather Instruments
Grab Bag
100
The current state of the atmosphere, including short-term variations such as temperature and precipitation.
What is weather?
100
Weather forecasts that project too far into the future to accurately interpret all the factors that effect the weather.
What is a long-term forecast?
100
The boundary between two air masses of differing densities; can be cold, warm, stationary, or occluded and can stretch over large area of Earth’s surface.
What is a front?
100
Weather instrument used to measure temperature that contains a column of mercury or alcohol that expands and rises when heated and contracts and falls when cooled.
What is a thermometer?
100
The Earth surface over which an air mass forms and from which it takes its heat and moisture.
What is a source region?
200
This large body of air takes on the characteristics of the area over which it forms and can be described by its stability, temperature, and humidity.
What is an air mass?
200
Weather forecast that uses numerical data to determine how atmospheric variables change over time.
What is a digital forecast?
200
This high-altitude, narrow, westerly wind band occurs above large temperature contrasts and can flow as fast as 185km/h.
What is the jet stream?
200
Weather instrument used to measure air pressure.
What is a barometer?
200
Change in the wave frequency that occurs in energy when that energy moves toward or away from an observer.
What is the Doppler effect?
300
The average weather of a particular area over a long period of time; often observed over 30 year periods.
What is climate?
300
This type of weather forecast compares current weather patterns to patterns that occurred in the past.
What is an analog forecast?
300
This global wind system flows at 30 degrees north and south latitude, where air sinks, warms and returns to the equator in a westerly direction.
What are the Trade Winds?
300
Weather instrument used to measure relative humidity.
What is a hygrometer?
300
Global wind system that lies between 60 degrees latitude and the poles and is characterized by cold air.
What is the polar easterlies?
400
This branch of Earth science studies the air that surrounds our planet, including the study of atmospheric phenomena such as fog, clouds, snow, rain and lightning.
What is meteorology?
400
The record of weather data for a specific place at a specific time, using meteorological symbols.
What is a station model?
400
This global wind system lies between 30 degrees and 60 degrees north and south latitude, where surface air moves towards the poles in an easterly direction.
What is the prevailing westerlies?
400
Weather instrument used to measure wind speed.
What is an anemometer?
400
Weather instrument used to measure the height of cloud layers; estimates the amount of sky that is covered by clouds.
What is a ceilometer?
500
The exchange of heat or moisture with the surface over which an air mass moves.
What is air mass modification?
500
A line drawn on a weather map that connects points of equal or constant values.
What is an isopleth?
500
Deflects moving particles such as air to the right above the equator and to the left below the equator; caused by Earth’s rotation and combines with the heat imbalance found on Earth to create the trade winds, polar easterlies, and prevailing westerlies.
What is the Coriolis effect?
500
Balloon borne weather instrument whose sensors measure air pressure, humidity, temperature, wind speed and wind direction.
What is a radiosonde?
500
The area over the tropics where trade winds are forced together creating an area of low pressure.
What is the intertropical convergance zone?