BIO120H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Volumetric Heat Capacity, Rain Shadow, Gallery Forest

• School: UTSG
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIO120H1
• Professor: Spencer Barrett

Document Summary

Part four: atmospheric circulation: temperature and rainfall, atmospheric circulation happens because heating from the bottom makes the lower layers of air less dense. Air heated by the sun is less dense, as it rises, it tends to create a partial vacuum beneath it, and that suction causes surface air to be drawn toward the solar equator from the north and south. As the air rises, it expands more because there is less atmosphere above it to compress it. As air cools water vapour condenses and falls as rain near equator. Low pressure weather systems are always associated with precipitation: the warm air that comes down at the end of a hadley cell is dry, hot and desiccating; some of it restarts. Hadley cell process, and some of it enters the ferrell cells (mid-latitude cells) which occur at 30 to 60 degrees.