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 …
Course: Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather
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 …
Weather forecast game
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. …
Tropical Cyclones and their Development
Of all the weather systems on Earth, tropical cyclones produce some of the most intense and damaging weather. Known as Hurricanes in the Atlantic, Typhoons in the Pacific and Cyclones …
Monsoons
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 …
El Niño and La Niña
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 …
Rainfall in the Tropics
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 …
Thank you and goodbye
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 …
Sylvia’s solution
In this video Sylvia demonstrates the solutions to this Week’s practical activity; the isoline drawing exercise in Step 3.11. We have also provided the solutions for the exercise on a …
Weather forecast game
This week is your last chance to submit your prediction in the weather forecasting game, or to see if you can improve on your score from the previous week. If …
Rotating fluid dynamics
Now that you have seen the demonstration of the Coriolis effect in Week 1, let’s look at how this tank of water represents the atmosphere rotating with the earth. Pete …