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WCC Final
WCC final exam
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Sirocco | regional wind blowing (dust) from N Africa into the Mediterranean |
| Depression | Low pressure systems |
| Isobars | linear representation of atmospheric pressure |
| Weather front | boundary between air that is very different (represented by thicker lines) |
| Air rotates in a clockwise fashion | High pressure systems in the northern hemisphere or low pressure systems in the southern hemisphere |
| Air rotates in a counterclockwise fashion | Low pressure systems in the northern hemisphere or high pressure systems in the southern hemisphere |
| Low pressure gradient | (far apart isobars) – not very windy |
| high pressure system | air is sinking down. Not breezy. Convergence in the air, which gets sucked straight down to the ground, and diverges on the air. Lead to clear, sunny weather. |
| low pressure system | there is convergence (inward motion) on the ground, which gets sucked upward, and diverges into the air. Adiabatic processes. Low pressure systems are rainy affairs. |
| What's in the atmosphere? | • Nitrogen • Oxygen • Argon • All others o Water vapor o Methane o Nitrous oxide o Ozone o CFCs o Aerosols (a colloid of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in the air) • CO2 |
| What are the sources for gasses in the atmosphere? | • Biological processes (respiration) • Radiogenic (Argon) • Physical processes (volcanoes) • Anthropogenic (human fuckery) • Photochemical (light/chemicals creating new compounds) |
| Radiosonde | -balloon with data logger (pressure, temp, humidity, wind speed, direction, etc) -radios back findings -rises to >30 km high |
| Atmospheric layers | • tropo (weather) • stratosphere (greater temp) • meso (lower temp) • thermo (greater temp) |
| Environmental temperature lapse rate | variable. on the order of 6ish normally. measured by weather balloons. still air. |
| Atmospheric convection | the clouds form quickly – probably thunderstorms |
| High clouds (above 7000 m) | o cirrocumulus (spongey, mackerel sky) o cirrostratus (halo around the sun) o cirrus (feathery) |
| insolation | incoming solar radiation that reaches the earth/atmosphere • measured in watts/m^2 • watt is energy per time |
| Flux = s x Tr x sin angle | • Flux = solar insolation • s = Solar constant • Tr = net transmissivity (how much gets through atmosphere) • sin angle = sine of solar elevation angle |
| Types of heat transfer | -Radiation -convection (ex: growing cloud. Air is rising & condensing) • advection (ex: matterhorn. Horizontal transfer) -conduction (ex: chuck to floor. Direct transfer by touching) |
| Solar elevation angle | primary variable in finding out how much solar insolation is reaching the ground. components: -elevation – height in degrees above horizon -azimuth – where you look in the sky to see the sun |
| Marine layer clouds | developed just over water |
| Alternating red & blue on a weather front | stationary front |
| Seasons (dates) | -march 21 vertical ray on equator -june 21 vertical ray on tropic of cancer -sept 22 vertical ray on equator (other side) -dec 21 vertical ray on tropic of Capricorn |
| Earth's heat transfer | -cities radiate most -we have longer wavelengths than the sun (long infrared) -with no atmosphere, we would be at 0 degrees F (-18 C) -with atmosphere, it’s 59F (15 C) |
| Atmospheric moisture | -Sublimation (directly from solid to vapor) -deposition (directly from vapor to ice) -sensible heat – we can sense it with like a thermometer -latent heat – bound up in a material |
| Saturation vapor pressure | the pressure of a vapor when the vapor phase is in equilibrium with the liquid phase of that same material. When it’s saturated, there’s an equal number evaporating as there are condensing. |
| humidity | amount of water vapor in the air |
| Absolute humidity | mass of water vapor/ volume of air |
| Specific humidity | mass of water vapor/mass of air |
| Relative humidity | how much the air is holding at a certain temperature over how much it could hold at that temperature |
| Finding relative humidity | actual/maximum = relative |
| Dry adiabatic lapse rate | 10 C/km |
| Lifting condensation level | how much air parcels have to rise to make a cloud |
| Data on a weather map | -dot = cloud cover -top left is temperature F -bottom left is dew point temp -top right is coded pressure -bottom right is wind direction & speed -middle left is present weather |
| Coded pressure on a weather map | 084 coded = 1008.4 MB |
| Wind on a weather map | • 2 lines = 20 knots • the way the line is going toward is where the wind is blowing from • picture it like an arrow except instead of a triangle it’s a circle |
| clouds | aggregation of water droplets or ice in suspended air |
| wet adiabatic lapse rate | 5C/km |
| Cloud formation | -Typical raindrop is 2,000 micrometers (2mm) in diameter and it’s full of condensation nuclei -moisture droplets that form cloud are 20 micrometers in diameter -cloud-condensation nuclei are 2 micrometers in diameter |
| mamutus clouds | prospero clouds |
| middle clouds (above 6500 ft) | o altocumulus (cotton-bally) o altostratus (sun dimly visible, hazy) |
| Challenges for types of imagery | Visible imagery is not great for night, doesn’t tell you about air temp. Infrared shows temp. Water vapor shows flow in atmosphere. Water vapor is not the same as cloud cover or precipitation. |
| Contrails | trails left by planes in the sky. Water droplets or ice crystals. Why are there contrails? Because engines release really really hot water vapor. It needs to cool down a little bit so the water can condense. |
| Doppler radar part 1 | measured in decibels (DB) of Z, where Z is radar reflectivity factor. Measures how reflective the atmosphere is. -how it works • transmitter dish sends out a pulse • radar pulse hits a distant target • energy is scattered and returns to the receiver |
| Doppler radar part 2 | Beam at a higher angle will see what’s going on higher in the atmosphere. -Compile a bunch of angles to see all levels -high reflectivity = high precipitation -curved signature – shows if the storm has rotation (tornadoes) best shown in composite |
| Utility of Doppler radar | shows where the precipitation is occurring and the intensity of the precipitation. integrate over time, show how much rain occurred. ability to tell whether the storm is traveling toward or away from us. a hook echo shows that rotation is occurring |
| virga | rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground |
| Rainshadow | desert on the leeward side of a mountain or mountain range |
| Collision & Coalescence | Small cloud droplets suspended. Large ones falling. Small ones captured in wake of large. Bigger droplet, the faster it falls, & the more small cloud droplets it picks up. It also helps if some small droplets move up in the cloud – convection via updraft |
| Why is the wet adiabatic lapse rate slower? | phase change between gas and liquid. latent heat. |
| Supercool | between 0 & -40 C. anything below -40 is ice. between 0 and -40 is a mixture. |
| Why do cold clouds rain and not snow? | higher vapor pressure around water droplets than around the ice. So ice crystals grow larger at the expense of the water droplets. Water molecules move away from droplets. Ice gets bigger, droplets get smaller. The ice gets heavy, falls, & becomes water. |
| raindrop shapes | -little drop is spherical (<2mm) -medium drop is flatter on the bottom, rounder on the top (>2mm) -large drop is convex jellybean shape (<5mm) -huge drop breaks up into 2 smaller drops |
| Isotherms | lines of equal temperature |
| Hadley cells | air flows away from the equator at elevation, toward it lower in the atmosphere |
| Shores & breezes | onshore breeze is during the day (warming land), offshore breeze is at night (cooling lands) |
| 500 mb surface | planar region of constant pressure -equatorial region, really high • if it’s a high elevation, we expect there to be hot air beneath it • ridge -poles, really low • if it’s at low elevation, we expect there to be cold air beneath it • trough |
| The doldrums aka | intertropical convergence zone |
| Tropical Cyclones (low pressure systems) | -hurricanes in north Atlantic -hurricanes in eastern pacific -typhoons in western pacific -cyclone in Indian ocean |
| Tracking hurricanes | dots every 6 hours, colors represent intensity |
| Aspertatus clouds | undulating cloud base, post-thunderstorm |
| How to make a cyclone | -warm ocean water -humid air -converging winds -Coriolis force |
| Hurricanes part 1 | -efficiently operated -counterclockwise inspiral of air at ocean surface -will also rise and condense -towering cumulonimbus clouds -pressure gradient – really low in the eye, decreases radially outward |
| Hurricanes part 2 | -release of latent heat from water particles to droplets -dry air spirals clockwise outward at the top of the troposphere -warm core low pressure systems. Always warmer in core than surrounding air. Cold air warms up as it goes inward |
| Hurricanes part 3 | -isobars do all kinds of crazy stuff. 850mb surface gets closer to the ocean surface as it approaches storm center, does the opposite at the top with low pressure |
| Why was Sandy weird? | -weird pattern formed by stable and unmoving high pressure system around Greenland -trough and ridge -westerlies diminished by blocking high pressure system |
| Cold fronts | -cold air behind, warm/moist air in front -move from W to E in mid lats -temp the next day is cooler & dry -cold = denser & lower. wedges itself underneath warm air, forcing it to rise (condenses, forms cumulonimbus clouds) -intense but short-lived |
| Thunderstorm | violent convective storm w/thunder & lightning -localized, short-lived -associated with vertical air motion, humidity & instability -10-12 km height -downdrafts with rain -charge differences where lightning occurs |
| 3 Thunderstorm phases | Cumulus stage (rising) Mature stage (passes freezing level at top/some rising some falling, there’s rain) Dissipating stage (all falling. Rain. Also possibly hail) |
| How does hail form? | Hail goes up and down and up and down and they grow every time they go up. Stomation (?) |
| Hailstones | layered particles of ice (~5mm to a few cm) formed and precipitated during thunderstorms |
| Atmospheric stability | -absolutely unstable • really high environmental temp lapse rate -conditionally unstable • somewhere in between DALR and WALR -absolutely stable • environmental temp lapse rate lower than dry and wet ALR |
| Bow echo | -strong band of thunderstorms where some cells outrun others -it means the storm is getting more intense |
| Derecho | -strong straight line winds associated with downburst thunderstorms |
| Gust front | -move out in front of a thunderstorm -radar reflects off of entrained material |
| Microbursts | -vertical windshear -outpourings of lots of rain -you can have intense velocities of air that are moving down out of a well developed cumulonimbus cloud -symmetric. Hits the earth. |
| flying a plane...in a microburst..? | -increasing headwind = more lift. Reduce speed, lower nose. -downdraft & tailwind = less lift. Loss of altitude |
| Zulu time | 4 hours ahead of us, on military scale |
| Directional wind shear | surface and higher winds are blowing at right angles to one another |
| Tornado | rapidly rotating column of air that circulates around a small area of intense low pressure |
| Tornado details | mesocyclones develop inside supercell tornadoes Air counterclockwise, in & upward. 250mb pressure gradients. Directional wind shear is essential for vorticies to happen. Surface vorticies get sucked up. Warm moist air overlain by cold dry stable air |
| medium clouds | altocumulus (poofy but spotty), altostratus (milky sun) |
| low clouds | stratonimbus (most regular rain), stratus (flat, boring), stratocumulus (fluffy but flat), cumulus (floof) |
| nor’easter | a mid-latitude cyclone. Not a warm core low, and not a hurricane but has similar properties. Usually moves up the east coast. Between fall and spring. |
| Mediterranean climate (~40) | warm-hot, dry summers & mild-cool, wetish winters in N hem summer, zone of subtropical sinking moves N Subtrop HP cells & marine layer, rain unlikely except for thunderstorms. Summer. Polar jet streams, reach into lower lats, signif yearly rain. Winter |
| continental edge climate (~23S) | E winds blow moisture off continent cold water, S Atlant gyre to E & S Pacif gyre to W. Gyres bring cold Antarctic waters to continent edge, advect old water to N. Cold water = no rain. Ocean currents important. |
| marine west coast climate | -average monthly temperature is red line -average precipitation is the blue bars -inverses of each other |
| VA coastal area over time | -4-5 Ma, Richmond was the coast -250,000 ya, W&M is coast, Norfolk is still under water -20,000 ya, current continental shelf is coast, sea level a lot lower |
| Glaciogenic sedimentation in blue ridge | -~600m sequence of rocks -dropstone – dropped by a glacier -Glaciogenic sedimentation basinward of a piedmont glacier that kissed the sea – ice rafting (dropstones), gravity flow & suspension settling |
| nature of cloud cover descriptors | Clear, scattered, broken, overcast |
| diamictite | Glaciogenic conglomerate, with a huge range in grain size from boulders to mud |
| Pz | • 800-570 Ma • multiple episodes of glaciation that covered much if not all of planet earth (snowball earth) occurred 3 times • presence of C13 is a proxy for temperature. Negative number correlates with cold temperature. |
| Npz | 750-550 Ma |
| Box model of the carbon cycle | -Atmosphere CO2 -Biosphere organic compounds -Hydrosphere ionic CO2 (dissolved) -Solid Earth CaCO3 (calcite) & organic compounds |
| CO2 phase changes | -burial (solid to bio) -rotting & respiration (bio to atmo) -photosynthesis (atmo to bio) -gas exchange & mixing (atmo to hydro) -burning of fossil fuels (solid earth to atmo) -formation of calcite (hydro to solid) -weathering (solid to hydro) |
| Vostok | -miles of ice cores -transported back to universities -CO2 measured in bubbles, correlated with temp -Age of ice – proxy measure -Temperature of ice – O16 and O18 are proxy measures for temperature • O16 preferentially evaporated |
| Glacial erratic | the pioneers used to ride these babies for miles |
| Moraine | form by erosion & deposition from glaciers -dated deposits 20Ka -that’s the last “ice age” |
| Ice age defined by...? | -less solar insolation = colder temperatures -cooler summers – you won’t melt all of the snow |
| MILANKOVITCH CYCLES | -precession (tiling toward or away) -obliquity (wobble of axis. 24.5-22.5) -eccentricity (change in orbit) -changes on 40,000 year frequency |
| Growing season | from last spring frost to first fall frost. ~7 months. date of the last/first frosts, and the average. Spring has gotten earlier, fall has gotten later Growing season is about a week later than it used to be Tell it to grandpa Eugene |
| Error bars | Bars are 1 sigma aka 1 standard deviation. How variable the data is. |
| urban heat island | Cities tend to be warmer than surrounding rural areas. In late 1970s the burg has urbanized a lot. |
| Global temp change & eustatic SLR | # days below freezing decreased # record highs ^, # of record lows v, Was about half and half in the 50s. Global land & sea temp has increased by .5ish degrees C & arctic sea ice volume steadily decreased since 80s SLR 1.5 in/decade. |
| Hurricanes & Global Warming paper | Event risk, vulnerability, outcome risk. no overall increase, only multidecadal cycles, no direct link to GHGs. Models contradictory & can't predict. so many metrics of intensity. Lots of $ put into coastal infrastructure |
| Cryogenian (snowball earth) paper | Some rocks that were proved to be at the equator were dated at the same age as some rocks that were from the snowball earth era, they both showed ice, so it was global in extent. Used U-Pb dating of extrusives, paleomagnetism, palentology, BIFs |
| C in terrestrial sink paper | temperature sensitivity of decomposition increases with increasing molecular complexity of the substrate. if warming releases CO2 it could create pos feedback. |
| Negative feedback loop | if the change in one direction facilitates a change in the other direction. Is self limiting, positive increases change until you reach a new steady state |
| Positive feedback loop | facilitates change in the same direction. |
| Permafrost | -so like trees & vegetation -active layer (frozen stuff that maybe thaws a little in the summer) -then permafrost – stays frozen always • ~100 m -wet boggy ground because it can’t drain. So creates bogs, which is very productive, & has a lot of C & N |
| Standard deviation | variability of data. SD = sqrt of 1/N sigma (xi-x)^2 |
| Coefficient of variation | Cv = SD/average |
| El Nino & Anchovies p1 | -upwelling of cold water off the west coast of south America -strong trade winds blow surface waters away from coast -warm water on Indonesia side, and low pressure systems/rain -and high pressure system right off the coast |
| El Nino & Anchovies p2 | Changing regional circulation patterns in pacific. Australia is dry -cold water (opposite) is la Niña -during el nino winters, polar jet stream shifts S. Wetter in AZ, CA, TX -la nina, the jet stream gets wobbly bc high pressure pushes it up |
| Hockey stick curve | -northern hemisphere -last thousand years -can you run the model backward to create known temperatures from the past |
| General Circulation Models (GCMs) | -you grid up planet earth and figure out climate parameters inside a box. And you stack up the box and look at all the way up in the atmosphere. -stack them down too because oceans -fluids can move between boxes |
| Residence time | amount in sink/flux (in or out) |
| Steady state | flux in = flux out |
| Difference in rate of inflow & outflow | dn/dt = a = kn |
| Residence & response time | Longer the res time, longer the response time |
| Lake effect snow | lakes. -warm lake releases heat & moisture which rises, arctic air blows over it. Then wind blows onto cold land. |
| mid latitude cyclone genesis | made a cyclone out of nothing. |
| HEY IDIOT STUDY UNITS | atm pressure = kPa or mb, specific humidity = g(wv)/kg(air), insolation = watts/m^2, density = kg/m^3 |
| Snow vs freezing rain | -snow never crosses it melting line. Freezing rain starts out as snow, melts into rain, & back to freezing -slight temp inversion & shallow freezing layer. Shallow like it freezes when it hits the surface. -snow can have slight temp inversion or not |
| Graupel | precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm (0.079–0.197 in) ball of rime. |
| Freezing rain associations | -associated with the passing of a warm front -warmer over colder air -wedge shape -where the cold air is just starting to slide under the warm, that’s rain. Then the more % cold it is the closer it gets to snow -boundary can be up to 600 km |
| Energy vs power | -energy – ability to do work, force applied through a distance (Joules) • SI – kg m^2 s^-2 -power – energy/time (Watt) • SI – kg m^2 s^-3 |
| Power | • Power in watts = ½ * (air density) * (area) * (wind velocity^3) |
| Haze | fine-grained dry or wet dust (even salt particles), dispersed throughout a portion of the atmosphere that limit visibility |
| climate change options | -adaptation -mitigation -geoengineering (shield in space) |
| Koppen type A | tropical/megathermal. Wet all the time or seasonal wet/dry |
| Koppen type B | dry/arid & semiarid. |
| Koppen type C | temperate/mesothermal. Like us in the burg |
| Koppen type D | continental/microthermal. Summer/winter, like the northeast. Ontario, Canada. Maine. |
| Koppen type E | polar and alpine. |
Created by:
haleyBUGoxox
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