A bit of Atmosphere

Categories: Atmosphere
Going to try a mixture of old and new approaches wih Higher tomorrow. I think I'll try to book the class in a box for starters. I'd like students to have a go at the classtools matching pairs exercise below to review your knowledge of atmospheric circulation from Wednesday:

Click here for full screen version

I used webcams two to three years ago when teaching this, and I am not sure what is blocked and what is not, but we could maybe then have a look at the world map on earthcam and pick out sites at our cell boundaries(e.g. UK- London?, Antarctica etc) and as an extension activity, if the conditions do not match your expectations, try to justify why this might be the case (what other factors might influence weather?). A look at the overall pattern would be more apparent if we then used Google Earth with the weather layer turned on, and again there might be opportunities here to look at anomalies. I could have used the webcams on GE, but unfortunately, there is no student access through the network:

I'd like to then start talking to you about the role of the oceans in redistributing energy. We could again start with Google Earth by looking at sea temperatures:

Hopefully, although really simplifying the science, you'll see a surplus of heat energy stored in the seas near the equator, but there is also scope to discuss the uneven distibution of heat here-for instance, if we compare the temps on the eastern coast of Canada with ours, Canada's is much colder despite being on the same latitude. What reasons could we give for this? Finally, I'd hope to use the powerpoint by Ollie Bray on ocean currents below, but as slideshare is blocked in school,it all depends on Ollie getting my request for a download before class tomorrow!

Higher Geography Ocean Currents

View more presentations from olliebray. (tags: geography atmosphere)