Geographies of Weather and climate

what is weather

• Long-term (50 years) weather averages.

• The state of the atmosphere, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities. consists of the short-term (minutes to about 15 days) variations of the atmosphere state.

• A physical quantity characterizing the mean random motion of molecules in a physical body. In other words, it is a measure of the degree of hotness or coldness of a substance.

What is an atmosphere?

• Area in the atmosphere in which the pressures are lower than those of the surrounding region at the same level

• The physical process by which a liquid or solid substance is transformed to a gas; the opposite of condensation

• The envelope of air surrounds the Earth and is bound to it by gravity.

Which of the following is correct

• Air mass is a large body of air that has similar temperature, pressure and moisture properties

• The front is the meeting point between two air masses of different densities. Since the temperature is the most important regulator of the atmosphere density, a front almost invariably separates air masses of different temperatures. When warmer air replaces the colder, it is a warm front, and a front is a cold one when the opposite occurs.

• Isobar is a line of equal or constant pressure. Measured in millibars (MB).

• Precipitation is any of all of the forms of water particles, whether liquid or solid, that fall from the atmosphere and reaches the ground. The forms of precipitation are rain, drizzle, snow, snow grains, snow pellets, diamond dust, hail, and ice pellets.

______________________ is movement of air caused by changes in temperature and air pressure.

The coldest temperature ever officially recorded was-89.2°C.

• True

• False

The naming of hurricanes and tropical storms officially began in 1953.

• True

• False

choose the correct statement(s)

• The wind doesn’t make a sound until it blows against an object.

• At any given time, on average there are about 1800 thunderstorms occurring on Earth with 100 lightning strikes per second.

• For each minute of the day, 1 billion tonnes of rain falls on the Earth.

• The Lowest Temperature Recorded on Earth is -89.2°C (-128.5°F) at Vostok, Antarctica on July 21, 1983.

• The Highest Temperature Recorded on Earth is 56.7°C (134°F) at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913.

The synoptic chart is a weather chart reflecting the state of the atmosphere over a large area at a given moment

• True

• False

Beijing's biggest climate issue is not the weather, but its air pollution.

• True

• False

West China has the most extreme summer to winter temperature differences.

• True

• False