Course: Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Before you start the course, we’d like you to have a go at trying to predict the weather in Reading, in our game hosted on the Royal Meteorological Society website. …

The word ‘monsoon’ tends to be used very loosely to describe any particularly prolonged spell of wet weather. In fact the word has a very specific meteorological meaning. It is …

Every few years a very noticeable change comes about in the temperature of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The eastern side, which is usually the coolest part, warms up considerably, particularly …

Earlier this week we looked at the radiation budget of the Earth, that is the difference between the incoming energy from the Sun and the outgoing infra-red energy lost to …

Congratulations on completing the course! Hopefully, by the end of this week you should feel that you are happier: explaining some of the processes which transfer energy through the Earth …