A&O SCI 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Orbital Forcing, Atmospheric Circulation, Radiative Forcing
28 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Stratification = not mixing so less stratification is equal to more mixing. Orbital forcing, human-induced changes in greenhouse gases concentrations. What is surface atmospheric pressure: weight of the air above a particular point. If pressure is high, then the weight of the air is relatively large. If pressure is low, then weight of the air is relatively small. If the temp in a column of air is colder than surrounding air, then air will be dense and pressure will be high. What happens when there is low surface pressure: the surrounding air will try to rush into the zone of low pressure to even out distribution of tam weight which will push the air up creating rising motion. A general principle of atmospheric circulation is that winds will blow to try to even out pressure differences (away from low pressure and toward high pressure)
