Stratopause
Tropopause
Ozone
Ozone hole
Jet stream
Insolation
IR – or Infrared radiation
UV – or ultraviolet light
Methane
Carbon dioxide
Greenhouse gases
Greenhouse effect
Convection currents
Coriolis effect
Equator
Landmass
Cold front
Warm front
Hadley cell
Water characteristics
Latent heat of condensation
Hurricane
Tornado
Monsoon
Cloud ‘seeding’
Milankovitch cycles
El Niño Southern Oscillation
La Niña
Compare and contrast weather and climate.
Describe the Earth’s earliest atmosphere, weather, and
climate.
What were the likely components of the earth’s
earliest atmosphere?
How were nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and sulfur added to
the atmosphere?
What are the two main gases that make up the lower
atmosphere?
What are ‘aerosols’?
Compare and contrast the stratosphere, stratopause,
troposphere, tropopause, mesosphere, and thermosphere.
What keeps the different layers from ‘mixing’?
Where is the ‘jet stream’ located in the atmosphere?
What creates the ‘jet stream’?
How do airplanes use the ‘jet stream’?
Where is the ‘ozone hole’ located in the atmospheric
layers?
Where does heat in the atmosphere come from?
What is albedo?
List various surfaces and their respective albedos.
What is reflection vs refraction of energy?
What eventually happens to the energy the reaches the
earth?
How does the relatively constant temperature of the
earth verify this?
What is ‘short wave radiation’ and infra-red
radiation?
What happens to UV light as it passes through the
atmosphere?
Describe how greenhouse gases cause the greenhouse
effect.
Why is energy flux lower at the poles and higher at
the equator?
Describe ‘convection currents’ in the atmosphere.
What causes these convection currents?
What happens to air density when cool, dry air sinks?
What happens to air density when warm, moist air
rises?
Why does warm air rise?
Why does air ‘expand’ as it rises?
How does moisture cause warm air to rise faster?
Why does cool air sink?
Why does air compress as it sinks?
What is ‘wind’?
What happens to the air above an area of dry land that
has heated up?
How do convection currents affect the hydrologic
cycle?
What is the Coriolis effect?
Describe the water swirling down a tub drain and the
cause of the swirl direction.
Compare and contrast wind directions. East wind vs
west wind vs south wind vs north wind.
How does the area of the ocean surface affect weather
patterns south of the equator?
How does landmass affect weather patterns north of the
equator?
Compare and contrast a warm front vs a cold front.
List the characteristics of a warm front and a cold
front.
What is a Hadley cell?
Where do hurricanes get their power?
How does the latent heat of condensation affect storm
strength over oceans vs over land?
Describe how tornadoes are thought to form.
List why tornadoes are generally more dangerous than
other types of storms.
Describe monsoons and where they occur.
What is cloud seeding?
What are Milankovitch cycles?
Describe Milankovitch cycles and the timescale at
which they operate?
To what phenomenon are they associated?
What is ‘El Niño’ and ‘La Niña’?
Who first noticed ‘El Niño’?
What causes El Niño?
What do computer models predict will happen if
atmospheric CO2 concentrations double?
Where does most of the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere come from?
What is a carbon sink?
What are the ecological implications of global
warming?
What are the economic implications of global warming?
What do the proponents of global warming say we should
do?
What do opponents of global warming say?
What conditions might counteract global warming?
