Climate and Weather (3/13-3/17)

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Summary:

This week we learned about weather and climate. They sound like they are the same thing, but they are completely different. Weather is the conditions during a certain day and time. Climate is the conditions over a long period of time. There are many factors and forms of weather which you have seen or felt before.

Humidity

Humidity is the amount of water vapor that is in the air. There are three ways that we can measure humidity. There is absolute humidity, relative humidity, and specific humidity. Absolute and specific humidity measure the exact amount of water vapor in the air, but relative humidity measures the amount in the air compared to any other amount. Relative humidity is the most common way that we measure water vapor in the air.

Temperature

As you may already know, temperature measures the hot or cold that is in the air. There are three scales or ways that we can use to measure temperature. There is Celcius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvin. You can convert Celcius to Fahrenheit, for example, 55 degrees Fahrenheit would be the same as 12 degrees Celsius. You can also do it the other way around. The wind chill factor is the temperature that you feel when the temperature in the air is combined with the speed of the wind.

Wind Speed and Direction

Wind speed and direction is measured with an anemometer and a weather van. It tells the speed and direction that the wind is blowing in. The units of this measurement are miles per hour or mph.  This unit can be converted into other units such as knots, meters per second, and more. Here is a table that converted a wind speed of 22 mph to different units.
mph (miles per hour)
22 MPH
knots
19.1 knots
m/s (meters per second)
9.8 m/s
ft/s (feet per second)
32.3 ft/s
km/h (kilometers per hour)
35.4 km/h

Air Pressure

Air pressure is the force that is pushing on you with the weight of the air.  In weather conditions, air pressure plays the role of making a breeze or a hurricane blast. The three elements that affect air pressure are height above sea level, temperature, and water vapor. It is measured with a barometer, used to measure the air pressure at a specific location. A barometer used to be made of mercury. When the air molecules come from the atmosphere, the more mercury pushes up a tube and a hand dial points to which weather to expect.

The Coriolis Effect

Have you every wondered why hurricanes spin? The Coriolis effect causes fluids to spin as they travel. In the northern hemisphere, storms spin counter-clockwise. In the southern hemisphere, they spin clockwise. This is because the Earth is rotating from west to east. Because of the Earth’s shape, points at the equator are spinning faster than points at the poles. In the center of a hurricane or the eye, there is less pressure. This causes the high-pressure part to want to rush towards the low-pressure part. The Coriolis effect does not allow it to do this, causing the storm to spin.

Types of Weather

There are many different types of weather including precipitation, which has many forms, tornados, hurricanes, droughts, floods and tsunamis. There are five main forms of precipitation: rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain, and hail. Tornados are funnels of spinning air that is at high speed. Hurricanes are tropical storms that form over water. Droughts are when there is not precipitation over a long period of time. Floods, the opposite of droughts are caused by thunderstorms that produce heavy rain over a small area. A tsunami is a large wave caused by an undersea disturbance. Storms can cause a lot of damage and can be very dangerous.

SP8: Obtain, evaluate and communicate information:

This week, we used scientific text to find important information, evidence, and ideas about weather and climate. We did a weather web activity which taught us about types of weather conditions. I read about different types of weather on different websites. I also answered questions about the information that helped me understand the facts and research.

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