ELEMENTS OF CLIMATE AND WEATHER (1)



ELEMENTS OF CLIMATE AND WEATHER

• Climate is decided by a region’s climate system. A climate system has few major components: the atmosphere, the layer, the cryosphere, and the land surface. The atmosphere is that the most variable a part of the climate system. The composition and movement of gases encompassing the planet will change radically, influenced by natural and man-made factors.

• Climate attributes

The most acquainted options of a region’s climate area unit in all probability average temperature and precipitation. Changes in every day, day-to-night, and seasonal differences additionally facilitate confirm specific climates. For instance, San Francisco, California, and Beijing, China, have similar yearly temperatures and precipitation. However, the daily and seasonal changes create San Francisco and Beijing very totally different. San Francisco’s winters don’t seem to be a lot of cooler than its summers, whereas Beijing is hot in summer and cold in winter. San Francisco’s summers are dry and its winters are wet. Wet and dry seasons are reversed in Beijing—it has rainy summers and dry winters.

• Climates have features which conjointly embody breeziness, humidity, cloudiness, atmospheric pressure, and fogginess. Latitude plays an enormous factor in deciding climate. Landscape may also facilitate outline regional climate. A region’s elevation, proximity to the ocean or freshwater, and land-use patterns will all impact climate.

• All climates are the product of the many factors, as well as latitude, elevation, topography, distance from the ocean, and location on a continent.

• Of the varied environmental condition components, temperature, precipitation, pressure and winds are the foremost necessary owing to their way reaching international influences. These components and their distribution, whether or not horizontal from equatorial to polar regions, or vertical from ground to atmosphere, are in a way or another full of some or all of the environmental condition factors: latitude, altitude, continentality, ocean currents, insolation, prevailing winds, slope and facet, natural vegetation and soil.

Temperature

• Importance of temperature

1. Temperature influences the particular quantity of water vapor present within the air and therefore decides the moisture-carrying capability of the air.

2. It decides the speed of evaporation and condensation, and so governs the degree of stability of the atmosphere.

3. As relative humidity is directly associated with the temperature of the air, it affects the character and kinds of cloud formation and precipitation.

• Temperature is the degree of hotness or coldness of an object. We tend to observe one thing feeling hot (like the soup we drink when were sick) or cold (like the snow, particularly if one is not carrying gloves), were talking regarding temperature.

• The temperature of an object, typically measured in degrees-Fahrenheit or degrees-Celsius, tells us what quantity heat, or energy, the item has.

• Factors Influencing Temperature

• The six broad factors affecting temperature of regions are viz. Latitude; Altitude; Continentality; Ocean currents and Wind; Slope, shelter and aspect; and Natural Vegetation and Soil.

Latitude

• The mid-day sun is sort of overhead inside the tropics; however outside the tropics the sun’s rays reach the earth at an angle.
• Temperature therefore diminishes from equatorial regions to the poles. Bands of rays coming back from the sun to 2 totally different latitudes on the earth’s surface.
• Band b falls vertically over the equatorial latitudes on equatorial surface E. Band a falls obliquely over the temperate latitudes on surface T.

 Travels through a shorter distance and its focused solar insolation heats up a smaller surface areal temperature in therefore high.

•  Travels through a extended distance and far of its heat is absorbed by clouds, water vapor and dirt particles. Its oblique ray has to heat up a large are; temperature is thus low.

Altitude

• Since the atmosphere is principally heated by conduction from the planet, it may be expected that places nearer to the earth’s surface are warmer than those in a higher place.

• Thus temperature decreases with increasing height on top of water level. This rate of decrease with altitude (lapse rate) is rarely constant, variable from place to position and from season to season.

• But for all sensible functions, it should be reckoned that a fall of 1deg F happens with an ascent of 300 feet or 0.6 deg C. per one hundred metres. It is sometimes a lot of in summer than in winter.

• For example in temperate latitudes, in summer, an ascent of solely 280 feet can cause the temperature to drop by one degree F., whereas in winter it needs four hundred feet.

• Similarly, the lapse rate is bigger by day than in the dark, larger on elevated highlands than on level plain.

• In tropical countries wherever the ocean level is 80 deg F., a city that’s situated at a height of 4,500 feet can record a mean temperature of 65 deg F.

Continentality

• Land surfaces are heated a lot of quickly than water surfaces, attributable to the upper heat of water.
• In different words, it needs solely one-third the maximum amount energy to lift the temperature of a given volume of land by 1 deg F, because it will for an equal volume of water.
• This accounts for the warmer summers, colder winters and larger range of temperature of continental interiors as compared with maritime districts.

Ocean Currents and Wind

• Both ocean currents and winds have an effect on temperature by transporting their heat or coldness into adjacent regions.

• Ocean currents just like the Gulf stream or the North Atlantic Drift heat the coastal districts of Western Europe keeping their ports ice- free.

• Ports set within the same latitude however washed by cold currents, like the cold currents, like the cold geographical area Current off north-east Canada, area unit frozen for many months.

• Cold currents additionally lower the summer temperature, notably after they area unit carried landward by on-shore winds. On the opposite hand on-shore Westerlies, convey a lot of tropical heat air to temperate coasts, particularly in winter.

• The Westerlies that come back to Britain and Norge tend to be cool winds in summer and heat winds in winter and area unit most useful in analgesic the climate.

• Local winds, e.g. Foehn, Chinook, Sirocco, Mistral, additionally manufacture marked changes in temperature.

Within every ocean left light arrow shows indicate heat currents, whereas right light indicates cold currents.

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