Metr 356 Class Notes

Monday November 1, 2004

Perry Teaff

Tristan Stickel

Announcements:

In next several weeks, we will be interspersing discussions of California weather patterns (i.e., Diablo Winds, Summer thunderstorms, Middle Latitude Storm type) with discussions of rainfall variability as an indicator both of climate and of climatic change.

Writing Assignment 2: Distributed Friday, 5 November, due Wednesday 17 November

Writing Assignment 1: Returned (Average 87/100)

Reading Assignments:

Gilliam, Completed

Williams

What You Have Completed So Far

Chapters 1-4 and part of 5); Chapter 9, 148-161

New Reading:

Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8

Reader

pp. 386-389, 538-543

Housekeeping:

- Writing assignment #2 distributed November 1st

- See class website for more information

Notes: Review of Dynamic lows

We started class by going to the construct your own weather map page. Plotted the surface isobars and noticed an Anti-cyclone over the northwestern US. Dynamic Highs and Lows are stronger then thermal Highs and Lows. We also noticed a Wave cyclone over the Northeastern part of the United States.

            Next we went back to the class website to look at the most current 500mb chart. We discussed Ridges, Troughs, and divergence. We noted the east side of the trough was cloudy. Wave cyclones move along the jet stream at an average of 50 mph.

Next we looked at slides of Advection fog. There were less then 10 images of fog from satellite images to images taken from an airplane of fog hugging the coast. We talk about the texture of fog, depth of fog, and its relationship to the coast during the summer months.

We concluded class with a discussion of the Mediterranean climate and where it could be found in California. Although the Mediterranean climate encompasses much of California in comparison to other climate zones its quite small. Mediterranean climates fall along the west coast of a continent with cold ocean currents at its coast. Also a dry desert region is to the south and a wet climate region is to the north.         

Mediterranean Climate

Characterized by mild wet winters and warm to hot, dry summers:  typically occurs on the west side of continents between about 30o and 40o latitude.  Bounded on the north by the Marine West Coast Climate (from 40o   to  subpolar regions) and on the south by the Subtropical Desert Climate (from 30o to 25o or so).

Winter                                                                                                                   Summer

Temp         50s coast to 40s inland               Temp    60s coast to 100 inland

Rainfall      10-20" Nov-Feb                          Rainfall  <1" June-August

Climate                  Seasonal[1][1] Rainfall

Marine West Coast            >30"  Example:  Eureka CA  39.76"  (p. 213, Reader)

Mediterranean        10-29"  Example:  Berkeley CA 23.20"  (p. 212, Reader)

Subtropical Desert <10"  Example:  Tijuana, MX 9.45"

[1][1] Rainfall Season:  In Mediterranean Climate Zone, defined as the rainfall that occurs from 1 July of one year to 30 June of the next.  The season is defined in this manner for this climate because the annual precipitation is dominated by the winter precipitation.