What Comes out of the sky for weather.
Rain
Hail
Snow
Lightning
What happens with weather.
Storms
Thunder
Hurricanes
Monsoon Rains
The Weather is moving
The weather is caused by the circulation of air in the atmosphere. Air moves around the plants because of differences in temperature. The equator gets warmer because the sun shines directly on it. It’s cooler towards the poles, because the Sun’s rays are at an angle, and have less heating power. Warm air rises, cool air falls - it’s this air movement that drives the wind.
At the equator, warm air rises and moves away. It then cools and sinks in the subtropical areas (at 30º latitude). The areas of circulating air in the tropics are called Hadley cells.
At the poles, cold air sinks down and flows outwards. It is replaced by warmer air flowing in from above. These air flows are called Polar cells (above 60° latitude). In between the Polar cells and the Hadley cells, there are Mid-latitude cells of moving air between (30º to 60° latitude).
Air Carries water
As air circulates around the Earth, it carries large quantities of water vapour.
When the air cools, the vapour condenses into water droplets, and forms clouds. Inside clouds, water droplets bump together and get bigger. Eventually, the cloud becomes saturated and the water droplets fall to Earth as rain.
Warm air holds a lot more water vapour than does cold air, which can make the air in the tropics feel very humid (moist). This is also why Tropical places have high rainfall.
A water droplet usually needs a tiny particle to form around. Particles include smoke, dust or salt in the air.Air that’s very polluted creates smoke-fog (Known as smog) in cities. This air can be trapped near the ground.
High up in the clouds, it is very cold, and water droplets eventually freeze into ice crystals. (This height is called freezing level.) The crystals collide to form snow flakes, which fall when they are heavy enough.
Amazing invention - Cloud seeding
Scientist have figured out a way to make clouds release their snow or rain. A plane drops dry ice or silver iodide crystals into a cloud and water attaches to the crystals. Cloud seeding is most successful at producing snow over mountains.
Extreme weather
Storms
Jupiter has a massive hurricane (the red spot) that’s been blowing for centuries.Venus has clouds that rain sulfuric acid! Compared with the weather on the other planets, Earth’s weather has a comfortable range for human life. But, sometimes, extreme storms produce damaging winds, rain, and snow.
I learned that the weather is really important. So now I am learning more about it.
