1 / 42

Atmospheric Physics for School Kids

Atmospheric Physics for School Kids. by Ed O’Lenic, Chief Climate Operations Branch NOAA-NWS-Climate Prediction Center. The Sun is the source of nearly* all energy on the earth, including that in the atmosphere, the oceans and on land. *Exceptions are geothermal and nuclear.

famanda
Download Presentation

Atmospheric Physics for School Kids

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Atmospheric Physics for School Kids by Ed O’Lenic, Chief Climate Operations Branch NOAA-NWS-Climate Prediction Center

  2. The Sun is the source of nearly* all energy on the earth, including that in the atmosphere, the oceans and on land.*Exceptions are geothermal and nuclear

  3. The Sun is a furnace almost a million miles across that makes radiation through a process where 2 atoms of hydrogen are forced together (by gravity) to make 1 helium atom and lots of energy (in the form of radiation).

  4. The Sun’s behavior affects the space environment near the Earth. Solar flares and coronal holes cause auroras, which affect radio communication,satellites, andmanned spacevehicles.

  5. The Sun spews out a continuous stream of particles. We can see this using a coronagraph, which blocks out the solar disk, showing only the sun’s hot corona.

  6. Solar particle streams make Earth’s magnetic field visible and affect electric power grids and space operations.

  7. The Sun’s radiation travels to Earth, 93 million miles away, in 8 1/3 minutes. When it gets to our planet: Half (5/10) of it reaches the ground and warms the land and ocean. 3/10 of it is reflected off of snow, ice, clouds and dust back to space. 2/10 of it gets absorbed by (gaseous) water, ozone, dust and in clouds.What happens to the half that reaches the ground?

  8. The sun’s radiation drives motions in the oceans and atmosphere that make our planet habitable.

  9. Meteorologists and Oceanographers:1. Observe and describe the global ocean and atmosphere,2. Formulate hypotheses to explain the observations,3. Use the hypotheses to make predictions.4. Perform experiments to test the predictions.5. Repeat 3., 4. Until hypotheses & experiments agree.This process is called the Scientific Method, which is a highly idealized model for scientific inquiry.

  10. Climate and Weather are closely related.Daily weather events for a given location and day of the year, represented here by temperature (top), averaged over 30 years, gives the smooth graph, called the climatology. Daily weather events for a given year differ from the climatology. These are shown as red and blue shading (top). When you average daily weather over 31 days and subtract the climatology (bottom) you see short-term climate variations. Warm weather events Cold weather events Warm short-term climate events Cold short-term climate events

  11. Some Recent Observations

  12. Instruments Used to Make Observations

  13. Cinder Cone near Mount Lassen, California Cinder Cone from North

  14. Reading Topographic Maps

  15. Observations – Ocean Temperature Climatology

  16. Isabel Hurricane Isabel about to make landfall Sep 18, 2003

  17. The Coriolis ForceCauses rotation in large-scale motionsystems, NOTSINKS or BATHTUBS. http://www.ems.psu.edu/%7Efraser/BadMeteorology.html

  18. MAJOR REGIONS OF TROPICAL STORM ACTIVITY

  19. Hurricane Floyd 2029 Universal Time (0429 Eastern Standard Time) September 14, 1999

  20. U.S. Hazards Assessment

  21. STORMS FEED ON AND WEAKEN TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCES From Nov 23-Dec 2, 1950. An intense, slow-moving extra-tropical storm along the U.S. East Coast was accompanied by sustained gale-force winds for several days, wind gusts to hurricane-force (including a gust to 110 mph on a sky scraper in New York City), wind-driven flooding near the coast (12 feet of flood water at La Guardia Airport), heavy snow in Western Pennsylvania. East Coast and Great Lakes shipping suffered. Record low temperatures occurred in the South, including 3 degrees F at Atlanta, Georgia. The insured loss from the storm was ~$6-7 B (recent $). The Great Snow and Wind Storm of Thanksgiving, 1950

  22. Sea Surface Temperatures

  23. El Nino Precipitation

  24. La Nina Precipitation

  25. El Nino summer: Few Atlantic Storms

  26. La Nina summer: Many Atlantic Storms

  27. La Plata Tornado 2002

  28. Flood damage

  29. Dust storm 1935

  30. Wave

  31. Blizzard

  32. Snowflake

  33. Full Earth

  34. Summary • Weather and climate forecasts protect lives and property and help us plan ahead. • Meteorologists and oceanographers are scientists (they use the scientific method, in principle). • Weather and climate phenomena are global and need international cooperation. • Weather and Climate scientists need to know about the sun’s radiation, seasons, electricity, magnetism, atomic physics, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, mathematics. • They also have to be able to talk about what they do so people understand and listen to forecasts and warnings.

  35. Air Pressure:The total weight of the air above (measured in units of mass/area or column height): 1 atmosphere = 1010 hectopascals= 1010 millibars= 29.9 inches of mercury= 33.9 feet of water= 10.3 meters of water= 14.7 psi= 1.06 tons per square foot

  36. Air Temperature:A measure of the speed of movement of air molecules,fast = hotslow = cold

  37. Density:The weight of a unit volume of air (for example, the number of grams in a cube 1 centimeter on each side)

  38. Perfect Gas Law:Pressure = Constant x TemperatureDensityTemperature differencescause density differences(when the pressure stays the same)

  39. http://www.nws.noaa.gov http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov http://www.srh.noaa.gov http://www.erh.noaa.gov http://www.wrh.noaa.gov http://www.crh.noaa.gov http://www.arh.noaa.gov http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~gadomski/ewall.html http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Flagstaff/science/cloud.htm http://www.weatherman.com/ http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/ http://www.wmo.ch/index-en.html http://www.drought.unl.edu/error_files/ndmc_redirect.htm http://lumahai.soest.hawaii.edu/Enso/index.html http://www.ems.psu.edu/%7Efraser/BadMeteorology.html

  40. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/ http://www.cdc.noaa.gov http://iri.ldeo.columbia.edu/ http://www.ipcc.ch http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/ http://www.al.noaa.gov/ http://www.arl.noaa.gov http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ http://www.ndsc.ncep.noaa.gov http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/ http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/ http://www.sec.noaa.gov/ncep/ http://www.spc.noaa.gov/ http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

  41. http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/nwp/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/regionalclimatecenters.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html http://www.metservice.co.nz/learning/forecasting_modelling.asp http://www.metservice.co.nz/home/index.asp http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/weather.html http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/weather/index.html http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~bnewkirk/

More Related