1) Temperature

Hand out on Temperature

Temperature fluctuations between the contents and oceans:

Continents take-in the sun’s energy more efficiently than oceans (See Rules of thumb on Temperature hand out). By absorbing the sun’s energy and converting that into heat, continents achieve greater daytime temperatures than oceans. When the sun is not present, nighttime, the continents are equally efficient in releasing what is left of the sun’s energy, thus equating to colder nighttime temperatures over land. The temperature of oceans fluctuates far less than that of the continents.

Illustrated by Temperature Figure (overhead sheet). The figure uses isotherms to illustrate the areas of a particular temperature. An isotherm is a line that denotes the boundary, on a chart, of a specific temperature. Each isotherm denotes a different temperature boundary.

The isotherms in the figure show the continent boundaries. The isotherms line up along the West Coast of North America and continue to denote a rapid increase in surface temperature.

2) Relative Humidity vs. Present Water Vapor

Station ID	Station A	Station B
Temp	43°	90°
Weather	•°•
Dew Pt.	39°	75°

Station A has a higher relative humidity than station B. This is to say that if the air temperature of 43° was cooled 4° (to the dew point) then the water in the air would condense and form a cloud or rain.

While station A has the higher relative humidity, station B, by comparison, has more water vapor present. This is to say that there is more water per "unit" of air than at station A. This is illustrated by the high dew point temperature.

3) Pressure

Hand out on Pressure

1) High Pressure Systems- An anticyclone is an area of high pressure on a weather chart that is completely encircled by an isobar. winds tend to move in a clockwise motion around the High.

A High that is not completely encircled by an isobar is known as a Ridge.

2) Low Pressure System- A cyclone is an area on a weather chart that is completely encircled by an isobar. As the observer virtually moves toward the center of the Low they would find the atmospheric pressure decreasing. An isobar is plotted at every 4-millibar change in pressure. Winds tend to move in counter-clockwise motion around an area of Low pressure.

A Low that is not completely encircled by an isobar is known as a trough.

4) Temperature and Pressure

This relates to pressure patterns because one of the two ways that Dr. Monteverdi will show us that surface pressures change is related to heating/cooling patterns on the earth's surface.

A certain class of surface low pressure systems (called thermal lows)  is caused by higher temperatures with thermal high pressure associated with lower temperatures. During the summer season, continents warm more than the oceans to, which explains why it the North American Thermal Low is found on the continent in the warm season and the Pacific High is found offshore. On the other hand, during winter, the oceans are warmer than the continents, with high pressure over North America and Asia.

For a given amount of sunshine (intensity or hours), land (rocks, soil, sand, ect.) heats up more (i.e. attains warmer temperature) than the ocean. For a given amount of darkness land  cools downmore (i.e. attains colder temperatures) than the ocean.

In the summer, wind speeds are of higher values later in the day because the temperature of the land mass is increasing. This creates a greater low since in the absence of other effects, heating a column of air results in the formation of a surface low pressure area (and, in the absence of other effects, cooling a column of air creates a surface high pressure area).