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Weather What to Study Sheet
Directions: Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.
1.) What is weather?
a. What the lower atmosphere is like at any given point or time.
2.) What is climate?
a. The average weather pattern of a region over time.
3.) What three things cause Climate to change? (Look in your notes)
a. The Sun
b. Ocean Currents
c. Volcanoes
4.) What are the four factors that affect temperature? (Look in your notes)
a. Distance from the Equator
b. Altitude
c. Distribution of water
d. Air Pressure and Winds
5.) What is insolation?
a. The amount of the Sun’s energy that reaches the Earth’s surface.
6.) What is the Coriolis Effect?
a. The curving of the path of a moving object caused by Earth’s rotating.
7.) What is a Convection Cell?
a. Part of the atmosphere where air moves in a circular pattern because
of unequal heating and cooling.
8.) How do clouds form?
a. Water vapor condenses on tiny pieces of dust.
9.) What is dew point?
a. The temperature at which saturation is reached.
10.) What is air pressure?
a. The force put on a given area by the weight of the air above it
11.) What type of pressure will produce cloudy or stormy weather?
a. Low
12.) What type of pressure will produce clear skies and sunny weather?
a. High
13.) What are isobars?
a. A line on a weather map connecting places with equal pressure.
14.) What are the three main cloud shapes?
a. Cirrus
b. Cumulus
c. Stratus
15.) What is humidity?
a. The amount of water vapor in the air.
16.) How is rain formed?
a. When the temperature is warm enough to melt ice, water droplets
then condense before hitting the ground.
17.) How is sleet formed?
a. When snow melts and partially melts and refreezes into ice pellets.
b. When the rain crosses into the cold layer of air near the surface, that
layer is deeper than the layer that would form freezing rain. The
deeper layer of cold air will cause the rain to freeze and form sleet,
or ice pellets. This type of precipitation bounces on impact with the
ground and can cause slippery surfaces just like freezing rain.
18.) How is hail formed?
a. Deep within cumulonimbus clouds ice crystals form and begin to fall
towards the Earth’s surface. As this happens, wind gusts pick up the
ice crystals, pushing them back up high into the clouds. As they begin
to again fall down, they continue growing in size. Again, a wind gust
might catch the growing hailstones, pushing them back up high into
the clouds. This process may be repeated several more times until
the hail stones become so large that they are too heavy for the wind
to carry, causing them to fall towards the Earth.
19.) How is snow formed?
a. Snow is commonly formed when water vapor undergoes deposition,
which is when water vapor changes directly to ice without first
becoming a liquid, high in the atmosphere at a temperature of less
than 32°F and then falls to the ground.
20.) What is the difference between a hurricane and a tornado?
a. Hurricanes last longer
b. Tornadoes can appear in Hurricanes
c. One is a large weather system and the other is an isolated weather
event.
i. A hurricane is a huge air mass that can be more than 1000
miles across, while a tornado is seldom more than 1 mile
across, and often much less.
21.) What makes hurricanes so dangerous?
a. Storm surge, high winds, torrential rainfall, and abnormally high
waves.
22.) What is relative humidity?
a. A comparison between the actual amount of water vapor in the air
and the amount the air can hold at a given temperature.
b. Given as a percent
23.) What is a land breeze?
a. A coastal breeze blowing at night from land to sea, caused by the difference in the rate of
cooling of their respective surfaces.
24.) What is a sea breeze?
a. A wind blowing from the sea to the land, especially during the day
when the land surface is warmer
25.) What are the four different types of fronts? Define each.
a. Cold Front
i. Cold air moves in under a warm air mass
b. Warm Front
i. Warm air moves in over a cold air mass
c. Occluded Front
i. A front formed where a warm front and cold front meet
d. Stationary Front
i. An unmoving front where a cold air mass and a warm air mass
meet
26.) What are fronts?
a. The boundary between two air masses.
27.) What is an air mass?
a. A large region of the atmosphere in which the air has similar
properties throughout.
28.) What is an anemometer measure?
a. Wind Speed
29.) What does a wind vane measure?
a. Wind Direction
30.) What does a barometer measure?
a. Air Pressure
31.) What can the Doppler radar do?
a. Doppler radar bounces sound waves off the storm clouds.
b. Doppler radar can tell if raindrops are moving toward or away from
observers, and it can spot spinning movements in clouds. This helps
scientists predict which way storms will travel.
32.) What is the Greenhouse Effect?
a. The ability of the atmosphere to let in sunlight, but to not let heat
escape.