A2 Meteorology Links and Lesson Ideas

Oh dear, this is where things start getting serious on your A2 course. Meteorology can be seriously hard stuff to get your head round. Although there's less of a need to be able to visualise the atmosphere in its myriad levels of detail now with the A2, it's still a challenging topic. The students still need to reconcile the local 'microclimate' scale with the globe-encircling Rossby Waves and the tri-cellular model. The fact that there are processes going on which cannot be seen tends to create problems. Despite this, the last few years have seen at least one of our students aiming for a career in this direction - it must be the inspirational teaching. Also a previous student recently won a prestigious prize for his work on aircraft contrails and global warming.

Start by keeping an eye on the weather forecast, and try to see how the weather changes according to reasonably predictable patterns, depending on the pressure situation, and the relative position of High and Low pressure systems. Note that when fronts pass over the country it tends to rain on those days, whereas High pressure brings drier settled conditions. Unless you get anticyclonic gloom of course.

Go HERE for information on the storms of October 2002, which could be a good case study of the effect of a low pressure system on human activity.

It's vital that you do lots of READING or you won't be able to achieve the best result in this course. Need to have appropriate images and exemplification.

Follow the forecast from day to day and try to keep on top of the SYNOPTIC situation. How is the weather in East Anglia compared to that in the rest of the UK ?

A very basic SCHEME OF WORK (rough) can be found here. I encourage students to keep up to date with the patterns of the weather: try to watch the forecast regularly to see how the changes may be related to the synoptic situation. This is easy to do if you get into a routine of doing it, and difficult to catch up later. More will be added to this as I have time.

Here is what the students NEED TO KNOW for the exam. There is a lot to cover.

Go to the bottom of the page to read about 2 former pupils of Mister P doing well in the field of meteorology

LESSON PLANS / RESOURCES (39 and counting...)

1. An ICT Introduction (as used in June 2001 & 2003)

2. Air Masses - some brief notes...

You need to be able to recognise the different air masses influencing the weather and the link with stability of air masses.

POLAR MARITIME RETURNING (always a pesky one to remember and identify - remember Mr. Stone's synoptic charts!)

Make sure you know about the nature of the source region and the changes that happen to the air mass as it tracks away from its source region, and also the effects locally when it arrives in the UK, and also the relative frequency of occurrence of different air masses and that it varies between the N and S of the country....) Phew... A lot to remember there...

3. Atmospheric Circulation Models

4. Anticyclones - some brief notes

5. Humidity (unfinished...)

6. Hurricanes

I suggest that KATRINA is the key case study.

We have Spike Lee's film and numerous FOX NEWS reports of the approach of the storm. Also have Val Vannet's definitive powerpoint resource on the aftermath, and also the Roy Nagel interview, and the captions of the looters in the water in the aftermath of the hurricane.

Mr. Dolan will be teaching this section.

He used some ideas from Tony Cassidy's RADICAL GEOGRAPHY site, looking at Hurricane Katrina.

Check out the relevant page of Tony's site to get the sheets.

Make sure you know the critical temperatures and the way that the hurricane track curves.

8. Climate Change / GLOBAL WARMING

9. Hurricanes and Heat Islands ICT Lesson

10. El Nino (Updated January 2007)

This is a major surface pressure anomaly and needs to be understood. Should be able to draw diagrams showing the normal or Walker circulation and the alteration and the impact that this has on the key areas of Northern Australia and Peru.

11. For an excellent little animation of the CORIOLIS FORCE go to the Danish WIND POWER site. This gives the impression of the spiralling effect of the Coriolis force.

13. Lapse Rates

These are vital to the understanding of the atmosphere in the boundary layer.

Image of a temperature inversion over the Hope Valley, Peak District photographed by Mister P one winter morning some time ago. Note on the right hand image how the top of the inversion can be seen by the flattening of the emissions from the chimney in the centre of the image.

Temperature inversions are strange old things... High pressure can have a really major effect on people's lives: it affects their TV reception. The signals for radio and television usually bounce off the troposphere - when there is an inversion the top of it bounces the signals over longer distances: something called tropospheric ducting.

Make sure that you are happy that you can explain (and draw tephigrams to explain...) the following states:

STABILITY

INSTABILITY

CONDITIONAL INSTABILITY

These are featured as part of the synoptic paper. They are similar in formation and structure to both mid-latitude and tropical depressions, but are more localised, and can affect very small areas. We have a selection of videos ranging from UK Twisters, which features the Selsey twister which damaged Patrick Moore's telescope, to Twister chasers in Tornado alley in the mid-west of the USA.

I was contacted recently (February 2006) by one of the Directors of TORRO (Tornado and Storm Research Organisation) which is based at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. Dr. Richard Wild heads the Heavy Snow and Blizzards Division. He is also by day a Meteorologist for a company called WeatherNet Ltd based in Bournemouth. He has now launched a rather good website which is based around the theme of SNOW and BLIZZARDS, and which includes links to download his PhD thesis and browse other snow and blizzard related news and research that the website contains. To check it out, go now to RICHARD WILD's website. Would be useful for those who need to know more about the impact of SNOW on human activity. Reminds me of a project I did when doing my degree, back in 1984. We managed to blag our way into Emley Moor, as the original transmitter collapsed due to extremely cold weather causing ice to form on the supporting cables. Also got into transport control room, and Police station to consider impact on crime.

Some of the most detailed presentations I've seen are those produced by John Harris from Radley College, Oxford. They are highly illustrated and have lots of 'moving parts', and cover many topics related to A2 Meteorology. Pop HERE and have a look. They are part of the highly regarded METLINK INTERNATIONAL website. The presentations on the site (which also have accompanying PDF files) include information on the following areas:

(Atmosphere and Synoptic charts are under construction at the time of writing)

20. SHOCKWAVE ANIMATIONS

Go to GOOGLE and search on SHOCKWAVE ANIMATION DOWNLOAD, and then the subject you want them on, and you'll find various useful animations. I also came across a piece of software called FLASH COLLECTOR, although there are probably lots of other similar pieces of software. A company called UNH SOLUTIONS offers a very useful and FREE one which I have used successfully for some time now. There's a useful World Weather download I had a look at. Also try the Teacher Resource Exchange and search for Power-point presentations. Or use the old searching tip: subject filetype:swf

For some of the best animations of GLOBAL CLIMATE go to the site of the UNIVERSITY OF OREGON. This is one of the best sites on the Internet for this area of study.

Take one A2 piece of paper, a red and blue marker pen, scissors, glue stick and reference images. A sheet of labels is handed out to each group, and the aim of the task is to produce a diagram to show the circulation of heat in the atmosphere as developed by Hadley and Ferrel: the TRICELLULAR MODEL. The LABELS (HERE THEY ARE) are also needed. Or you can go to your favourite generic textbook and produce your own.

23. Try the activities and information for 'AS' Atmosphere studies at the KING'S SCHOOL WORCESTER. Some good stuff here.

Some activities using the textbook "The Atmospheric System" by O'Hare and Sweeney, which we use along with a textbook by Musk to develop the ideas further than the framework provided by David Waugh.

This includes an exercise in constructing ISOBARS. There are various sites which give guides on this: try an appropriate search to find them. There is one produced by MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY as part of a Key Stage 3 teaching pack on the Weather.

Try 'drawing isobars exercise' to find a few more. GO HERE for an example that I found (most are USA based...)

This was something that came to my attention after a Guardian article was published on the topic in December 2003. Apparently the earth is receiving less insolation than before, due to the effect of humans. I'll add some more on this intriguing topic when I get the chance.

Go to the BBC's SCIENCE and NATURE page for more on the programme, including a transcript.

This SHOCKWAVE interactive exercise was posted by a FINNISH contributor as part of the EU's CELEBRATE project, and looks at weather data of HELSINKI. You follow the tasks and make choices by clicking on areas of the screen to explore CLIMATE GRAPHS. Give it a go and see what you think. There are others ideas from the CELEBRATE project elsewhere

26. DO YOU LIKE CLOUDS ?

Why not join the CLOUD APPRECIATION SOCIETY ?

An e-mail and a fee of just £3 will secure a membership, which comes with a CERTIFICATE and free BADGE. There is a CLOUD GALLERY on the website, and a Cloud of the Month feature.

Importance of clouds in basic weather forecasting and weather lore.

Thanks to Dr. Peter Atkins for an article in 'Geography Review' which listed a range of useful sites. Here are the best of the bunch...

31. The Met Office have made a FREE DVD available - all you need to do is send an e-mail via the Met Ofice website. This is recommended. I have made a worksheet with some questions for each of the video clips.

I drove through it on several of the nights and it was a bit dodgy. Also saw some very dodgy driving on the coast road to Hunstanton.

Added some FOG links relating to work we'll do in the first week of January. Will be left with this work during my absence as a research task.

33. ANIMATIONS on large scale atmospheric circulation such as Jet Streams - a useful link

This has apparently been given the name KYRILL by German meteorologists, in the same way that Hurricanes are named. Is this a trend that might become common if storms of this nature become more common events in the future ? Any suggestions for names from A - Z that could be used ?

I related it to a past question, and suggested that students put the words "mid latitude depressions" into Google. This will give you a page of returns with GeographyPages fourth - check out the PDF in 2nd place, from the Wycombe High School site. This uses the following 5 areas which can be referred to when considering the impacts: both positive and negative

35: PAST QUESTIONS (to plan and write)

Describe and account for the varying weather conditions that mid-latitude depressions bring to the British Isles.

Outline the conditions which lead to the formation of an anticyclone.

Examine the varying influence of anticyclones on the weather of the British Isles.

36. ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY

Talks in a box

The RMETS have made available 4 self contained "talks in a box". These explore 4 key areas of METEOROLOGY and I recommend that KES pupils download these and use them for a revision resource. The topics covered are:

CLOUDS

TORNADOES AND HURRICANES

WEATHER SYSTEMS OVER THE BRITISH ISLES

THUNDERCLOUDS AND CLOUD HAZARDS

Go to the webpage - download them and USE THEM !

We discussed how long term observations of the weather in an area can lead into the development of the generalisation called CLIMATE. We also discussed the development of MICROCLIMATES.

Weather observations: the MET OFFICE offer a range of online and print resources to support OBSERVERS.

This was produced by 'virtual' colleague Ollie Bray who teaches up in Scotland - hosted on Slideshare - good revision powerpoint

Don't forget that you can work through the workbook that you were given at the start of the session on meteorology:

Has activities on: The Energy Budget, Adiabatic Processes, Convection, Orographic Processes, Cyclonic Depressions, Cold Environments and Precipitation in Temperate Environments

40. UK WEATHER AVERAGES - new MAPS available

Thanks to David Rogers via SLN forum for details of some new MET OFFICE MAPS which are very good for showing weather averages and patterns. I have included one example below so that you can see what I mean - let me know if there's a problem with publicising the site in this way.

41. New Sea Ice animations - check out the amount of sea ice compared to the normal

43: CYCLONE NARGIS

May 2008

http://www.geography.org.uk/resources/cyclonenargis/

Plus a new NARGIS page of resource links.

Try my GLOBAL WARMING links HERE.

Don't forget the GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE programme on Channel 4 and analysis that was in the newspaper, and is on the supporting website

Includes information of UEA course on Climate Change I completed in 2002, and with some success !

Also the film: the 11th HOUR: shown on Channel 4 in May 2008

We use a pack published by Philip Allan Updates: Geography Review AS/A-Level Resource Pack called "Weather and Climate" - has some useful resources which are timed, and can be handed out as lessons. The one gripe is that the answers are not included, or at least suggested ones. This just adds to the time taken to prepare the material and anticipate questions and reduces their usability as far as I am concerned. Having said that. the activities make the students think, and they have to use the materials they are provided with in some depth in order to 'find' the answers.

Well done to James Screen, a former pupil for winning the John Connell Memorial Prize for his work into the role of aircraft contrails in enhancing GLOBAL WARMING. He's now doing research at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia ( I popped in to see him a while back...)

The importance of Contrails
Condensation trails from aircraft ("contrails") are an increasingly common sight over British skies, as civil air traffic continues to grow rapidly. These man-made clouds form when the extra water vapour in the engine exhausts is enough to kick-off cloud formation in air which would not otherwise form a cloud. Because of the large number of microscopic particles of soot and sulphuric acid also released by the engines, the cloud formed tends to have more droplets than a natural cirrus cloud, and so appears brighter and whiter. Making the atmosphere more cloudy more of the time can influence climate, by increasing reflection of sunlight away from the Earth's surface (a climate-cooling effect) and by trapping heat radiating upwards from the Earth and lower atmosphere (a climate-warming effect). Which effect dominates will depend on many factors, but one climate effect of contrails for which there is evidence is a reduction in the daily range of temperatures (i.e., warmer nights, cooler days). Research into contrails continues across the world using satellites, aircraft, and ground-based observations.

Was also interested to hear that another former pupil Lucy Verasamy, who was working for the PA Weather centre in London, has now been doing some weather presenting on the big screen at Sky News, and presenting various other weather reports such as the Ski report. Well done Lucy! Feel free to pay us a visit any time. Googling her name suggests that she has a lot of fans...

'A2' METEOROLOGY