GEOS 1034 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Microburst, Downburst, Cloud Base
18 Aug 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Basic weather phenomena taken to the extreme. Created by differential heating of the atmosphere and hydrosphere: plus planetary rotation. Air rises when warm, sinks when cool. Pressure systems: result of rising warm of falling cool air: winds spiral in and out in response, curve due to earth"s roation (coriolis effect) Storms develop at the interface between air masses: cold front. When cold and warm fronts move past each other, wind shear isolates low pressure zone. The jet stream: high spped river of air. Generated by upper atmosphere circulation around pressure cells. High and low pressure systems differ in that air rises in low pressure systems and sinks in high pressure systems. Already discussed climate cycles; weather cycles a logical occurrence: essentially moving weather around. Cyclical, but non-periodic: repeat time is highly variable. Some repeat times are short, some are long. Persistent high pressure cell drives familiar weather: replace high with low and weather appears strange .
