Slide Show Air Temperature & Ocean Currents

• Purpose of this lesson is to demonstrate understanding of what determines the air temperature of a location on Earth.

• Students use the Sim to deepen their understanding of the relationship between prevailing winds and ocean currents, observing that changes to prevailing winds can affect ocean currents, which can then affect the air temperature of a location.

• Investigation Question: How can changes to prevailing winds affect the air temperature of a location.

Lesson 3.3 Objective

• ​Changes to prevailing winds affect ocean currents.

• Changes to ocean currents affect how much energy is brought to (or taken from a location.

• If the ocean currents change, that means the amount of energy transferred to or away from a location will be affected.

​​The Impact of Prevailing Winds

• Tradewinds are defined as the prevailing winds closest to the equator.

• When an ocean current comes from the equator, it brings warmer-than-expected water to the places it passes, and that water is warmer than the nearby air.

​​The Effects of Tradewinds

NGSS ESS2.D: Weather and Climate: Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things.

• These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns.

• Energy transfers from warmer substances to colder substances.

• Water stores energy very well: the ocean can absorb a lot of energy before it changes temperature.

• The amount of energy in the air of a location is affected by its latitude, which determines the amount of energy transferred to that location’s land and ocean water.

• Surface currents are set in motion by prevailing winds, which push the currents in the direction they are blowing.

Multiple Choice

Which of the following does NOT affect how ocean currents move on a global scale?

• Animal populations

• latitude

• prevailing winds

• position of continents

Multiple Choice

Change in the direction of the current changed -------------- carried by the current.

• the amount of water

• the amount of energy

• the amount of dolphins

• the climate

Multiple Choice

Tradewinds are defined as the prevailing winds closest to _______.

• North America

• Europe

• South America

• the equator

Multiple Choice

True or False - Energy transfers from warmer substances to colder substances.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

The amount of energy in the air of a location is affected by ______, which determines the amount of energy transferred to that location’s land and ocean water.

• the spinning of Earth

• its latitude

• The current season

• The moon patterns