The weather game
We’d like you to have a go at trying to predict the weather in our weather game. Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about forecasting the weather yet! Why …
Course: Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather
A note for teachers and students
This course is for everyone who has an interest in learning more about weather across the world. However, there are certain sections in the course which may be particularly useful …
A case study of orographic rain
We’re now going to show you a case study of orographic rain through a series of different figures including a weather map, satellite image and precipitation map. By looking at …
Spotting features on a weather map
How are you getting along with the Week so far? In this and the next Step we’ve provided two different exercises to help you test what you’ve just learnt about …
Welcome to Week 1
Welcome to Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather, a free online course produced by the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading and The Royal Meteorological Society. The …
Welcome to Week 3
Welcome back to your final week of ‘Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather’. In Weeks 1 and 2 you explored the weather systems experienced within the mid-latitudes, particularly focusing …
Challenge Yourself
We hope you’re enjoying the course so far. Now we’ve got your attention, for those looking for something a bit more challenging we have gathered some extra material which you …
Welcome to Week 2
This week we continue to look at the weather patterns based in the Mid-Latitudes, still focusing on the UK. In the video, Sylvia outlines this week’s topics and introduces you …
How does this compare to Mars?
Many scientists have studied Mars and its atmosphere is well understood. Although it’s only around half the size of the Earth, with no oceans and a thin atmosphere composed almost …
The impact of volcanoes
Huge explosive volcanic eruptions in the Tropics, energetic enough to push sulphur gases up into the stratosphere where they condense into aerosols, can have a cooling effect on climate by …
Summing up Week 2
This marks the end of the second week of the course, we hope that you have enjoyed it and found it interesting so far. Hopefully, by the end of this …
Mid-week summary
In the next Step you’ll be able to consolidate what you’ve learnt so far by reading a weather map. Let’s first summarise what has been covered. Weather systems act to …
Jet stream
The polar front jet stream is a belt of westerlies in the upper troposphere, with wind speeds up to 200mph. It sits at a around 10km, the height at which …
A passing depression
If a depression were passing over you, when would you expect there to be cloud, what sort of cloud would you see, and when would it rain? Please note diagrams …
The unstable Polar front
We now know that a Polar front is the boundary which separates warm tropical air from the colder air near the pole. All depressions form on this Polar front, because …