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Lab 18: sky: weather, air quality

Sections:

  • Solar radiation-drives everything
  • Radiation, conduction, convection
  • Movement of air=weather
  • Temperature and humidity
  • Cloud formation
  • Storm formation: hurricanes and tornadoes
  • Climate change
  • Ozone depletion
Part one: purple air
  1. look up purpleair.com
  2. find the cleanest air on the planet, and the dirtiest
  3. why?
  4. is it always human caused, or can it be more natural?
  5. what is the air quality measuring?
Part two: radiation, conduction and convection
  1. what is the hottest part of the globe?
  2. why?
  3. if energy moves in three ways: radiation, conduction and convection, when hot air rises, which is this?
  4. how about when air touches warm ground?
  5. when sunlight goes through the atmosphere and reaches the surface?
  6. if warm air rises, what comes in its place? 
  7. from where?
Part three: pressure
  1. look on a weather map for big symbols H and L
  2. what do these represent?
  3. if warm air rises from the surface, how would the pressure change there?
  4. what would that do to the air circulation (wind)?
  5. if water evaporated over the ocean or lake, it would make clouds-would these move towards an L or an H on the map?
  6. as the clouds rise, do they get warmer or cooler?
  7. can they hold more water or less?
  8. what happens over a low pressure area?
  9. as cool, dry air drops from the upper atmosphere, what does it do to clouds?
Part four: Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells
  1. look up Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells
  2. find the places where air is rising-is it wet or dry there? why?
  3. why is the equator always a rising air place?
  4. find the places where air is falling-is it wet or dry there? why?
Part five: layers (onion boy)
  1. look up the layers of the atmosphere
  2. where is weather located?
  3. where do planes fly to the mainland?
  4. why does it get colder as you go up at first?
  5. what are airplane contrails made of? why?
  6. why does the thermosphere get hot?
  7. locate the ozone layer-what gas is there?
  8. what does it protect us from?
  9. why is that important?
  10. look up the "ozone hole"-where is it?
  11. what happened to it?
  12. what about now?
Part six: climate change
  1. look up the term "greenhouse gas"
  2. why is it called that?
  3. what on a greenhouse is like the gases?
  4. which ones are the most potent?
  5. which ones last the longest?
  6. what would the temperature of the planet be with NO greenhouse gases?
  7. what do plants do with carbon dioxide and oxygen in the daytime?
  8. if they die, and millions of years later, we burn them as fossil fuels, what do they release?
  9. why has the temperature of our planet increases like crazy since about 1850?
  10. what happened then?
  11. how will this impact the level of the sea?
  12. how will this impact glaciers? 
  13. look up the "doomsday glacier"-how big is it, and where?
  14. what would happen if this melted?
  15. the year is 2100, you are about 90 years old, what does the beach around our island look like?

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