Climate Processes Flashcards

Question

Causes of jet streams

Answer 1

-streams of air taht move up or down. Polar or subtropical jet streams Causes: -planets rotation, atmospheric heating -latitudinal and vertical large gradients of temperature and pressure at the intersection of a colder air mass from the north with a warmer air mass from the south

Answer 2

Meandering jet streams in the upper westerlies

Answer 3

-air sinks from zone of convergence (2 flows meet) towards the surface creating an area of high pressure. Therefor down wind of a ridge and up wind of a trough subsidence generally leads to good weather in the area of high pressure ~~~~~~

Answer 4

-large volumes of air with homogeneous thermal, moisture and stability characteristics formed by air sitting over an ocean or land surface for several days

Answer 5

-A cold front is defined as the transition zone where a cold air mass is replacing a warmer air mass -A warm front is defined as the transition zone where a warm air mass is replacing a cold air mass -An Occluded Front forms when a warm air mass gets caught between two cold air masses

Answer 6

-ocean holds a large amount of heat, water and carbon dioxide -global ocean circulation transports heat, water and co2 over large distances compared to the atmosphere -compared to land, oceans are thermally conservative, no large variations in temperature and need 4x the heat required to raise the temperature of water compared to air

Answer 7

-when co2 dissolves in the seawater it forms carbonic acid and as more co2 is taken up by the oceans surface the ph balance decreases moving towards a less alkaline and therefore more acidic state. -rising acidity can drop she’ll formation and impact the ecology

Answer 8

When P evaporate it goes into the atmosphere as DS with additional iron creating sulphate aerosols which form into a cloud

Answer 9

-the hypothesis describes a feedback loop that begins with an increase in the available energy from the sun acting to increase the growth rates of phytoplankton by either a physiological effect or enhance photosynthesis -clouds reflect sunlight into space-> cooling temperature Lower phytoplankton, less DMS->less clouds-> sunlight reaches earth->warmer temperatures more phytoplankton and DMS-> more clouds

Answer 10

-bucket method: sample first few meters and deeper waters tk compared temperatures -observing ships collect SST data -ocean observing systems: forecast further conditions of teh sea -Argo floats: robotic floats that are below surface, measured temperature, salinity, pressure and biochemical measurements)

Answer 11

-global wind patterns -surface ocean circulation -ocean gyres: large systems of circular ocean currents formed by global wind patterns and forced created by earths rotation. 5 major ones in major oceans -equatorial and counter currents -momentum transfer to ocean surface -areas of upwelling cold water

Answer 12

-surface current that develops from steady wind at the ocean surface. As wind blows over the ocean a surface current develops due to the drag at the wind water interface. -ekman spiral: indicates that each moving layer is deflected to the right of the overlaying layers movement -as wind blows across the ocean it moves water because of friday ion at the ocean surface. It moves surface water away from the coast and replaces this water upwelling cold water

Answer 13

-temperature and salinity differences produce North Atlantic deep water -

Climate Processes Flashcards

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