I need help designing a science report on weather.
By NickiSmurf
@NickiSmurf (1)
United States
December 12, 2006 10:54am CST
I have to do a Science report that is due at the beginning of January and need ideas and all the help I can get. I have to demonstrate the relationships of temperature, air pressure, wind speed, wind direction and humidity as elements of weather.
1 response
@trkanaujia (68)
• India
12 Dec 06
Here is some information on weather...
INTRODUCTION
Weather is a term that encompasses phenomena in the atmosphere of a planet. The term is normally taken to mean the activity of these phenomena over short periods of time, usually no more than a few days (see also Weather report). Average atmospheric conditions over significantly longer periods are known as climate. Usage of the two terms often overlaps and the physical concepts underlying them are closely related.
BASIC MECHANISM
When used without qualification, "weather" is understood to be the weather of Earth. At large scales, weather results from temperature differences around the globe, which arise mainly because areas closer to the tropics receive more energy per unit area from the Sun (see also Sunrise and Sunset) than regions nearer to the Earth's poles. On local scales, temperature differences can occur because different surfaces (such as oceans, forests, or ice sheets) have differing physical characteristics such as reflectivity, roughness, or moisture content.
Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. A hot surface heats the air above it and the air expands, lowering the air pressure. The resulting horizontal pressure gradient accelerates the air from high to low pressure, creating wind. The simple systems thus formed can then display emergent behaviour to produce more complex systems and thus other weather phenomena. Large scale examples include the Hadley cell and other forms of atmospheric circulation. An smaller scale example would be coastal breezes.
Because the Earth's axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane, sunlight is incident at different angles at different times of the year. In June the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, so at any given Northern Hemisphere latitude sunlight falls more directly on that spot than in December (see Effect of sun angle on climate). This effect causes seasons. Over thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbital parameters affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by the Earth and influence long-term climate (see Milankovitch cycles).
Rest of the information can be found at -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather
