Updated March 2007
Information about PHENOLOGY - I'm a member of the UK Phenology network. Now has a new NATURE DETECTIVES site to encourage younger children to get involved.
Links to WEATHER DATA and OBSERVATION
Going SKIING ? or want a SNOW FORECAST: this site has all this and more - find out where it snowed in the last few days, plus maps showing the current Precipitation, Wind, Temperature and Cloud. A great site.
For those who know about weather, THE WEATHER OUTLOOK is the place to go. Check out the DATA section for MODELS from UKMET office and others. FORUM has in depth discussion. Images and information to help you keep up to date with the latest forecasts.
My NEW FAVOURITE WEATHER SITE (passed on to me by colleague Mr. Stone in January 2004) is that of ANT VEAL. It can be found at GREAT WEATHER and has links to some wonderful animations of Rossby circulation, and all the detail you could want, plus some links to webcams around the country. Recommended.
Also visit the METCHECK site.
Try LEICESTER UNIVERSITY, which is an important centre for Meteorology.
A site oriented towards American CLIMATE LINKS here which is worth exploring.
Try ROGER BRUGGE's WEATHER PAGE for an excellent collection of links
Roger Brugge's site is linked to from the ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY. Go to the LINKS page and you will find all the detail you could ever want with a host of sites from overseas. This is THE place to go. Recommended.
Need a CLIMATE DIAGRAM ? - go this site: in German, but you can work out the names of places and get a climate graph for them: beats drawing them yourself..
Struggling with a weather term ? - try this online GLOSSARY from Weather.com.
ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION drives a lot of the weather patterns, and helps to explain why the equator doesn't keep on getting hotter until it overheats. This information from the University of East Anglia: a centre for climate research. Some basic animations, and I mean basic.
For an excellent page on OBSERVING THE WEATHER, with weather images, try this Australian Severe Weather site. Has some interesting and topical advice on observing bush fires.
Some great stuff at the Australian BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY. Loads of teachers resources, and Recommended.
The Smogs of London in December 1952 (just over 50 years ago now) killed thousands of people. The term Smog was apparently first coined by Dr. H A Des Vouex in 1905. Not a lot of people know that. Apparently those who lived up on Hampstead Heath were above all the smog.
A great set of links which you could follow and get materials from has been posted by RADLEY COLLEGE, who are mentioned elsewhere on the site. Recommended
Feeling a little run down trying to find some information about the Weather: I prescribe a visit to THE WEATHER DOCTOR. An American site which has some useful sections including a pictorial cloud atlas, details on the Fujita scale for Tornado strength and Saffir-Simpson scale. I particularly like the HAILSTONE SCALE. This is to allow people to describe larger hailstones found in the USA. Some useful ones are: hailstones of 2" diameter are called Hen Egg size, 3" diameter are called Teacup size and 4" diameter are called Grapefruit size.
A recent recommendation was a site which shows the views from some ROAD WEATHER CAMERAS which are at the side of the road in FINLAND. At this time of year, there are some rather dodgy scenes on some of them, but they are also remarkably clear and people don't seem to be too affected by snow and freezing temperatures - not like the UK then...
ANIMATION of the Sea Level pressure and surface winds (there are others at this site too...) - these are rather great, and play large scale too. Recommended.
Some multi choice questions and other activities from the COLLEGE OF ALAMEDA here. I also recommend that you scroll down to the GLOBAL MONTAGE OF CLOUDS AND TEMPERATURE, which is lower down the page. This produces an excellent GIF which shows the patterns of these variables.
A brief aside to an issue of the OS Mapping News (Winter 2002/3) regarding the atmosphere and the Coriolis Force.
The article describes a hotel which is being built on the equator in Uganda. The equator itself is apparently marked by a circle on either side of the road joined by a line.
"Whilst on the equator, the official carried out an experiment using some water, a sink and a twig. On the northern side of the equator the twig moved anticlockwise with the water; on the southern side it moved clockwise with the water. However, on the equator itself the twig moved straight down the sink with no movement at all."
Perhaps the episode of the Simpsons was right.
The BBC has predictably produced a whole range of weather resources which the other sites would be hard pushed to beat. There's a link from the NEWS site, or go to the BBC WEATHER SITE from this link. As well as short term and longer term forecasts, there is a new area dedicated to CLIMATE CHANGE. There are articles on weather themes which make up an A-Z of weather, by Bill Giles. There is a feature on the WILD WEATHER series I mentioned earlier.
One particularly useful section is on TIDES and weather forecasts for SAILING. It was from this page that I came across a link to a Swiss site called WESTWIND. If you go to the link, and select a type of chart, click ALL, and there will be a series of downloaded images which show the pressure situation in the North Atlantic and you can see how the pressure situation changes over the course of a few days. This is recommended viewing as you can see how HIGH pressure gives way to LOW.
If you're in Scotland and doing your Highers, you may already be aware of the excellent SCALLOWAY site that is mentioned elsewhere on GeographyPages. They have a full set of lesson materials for the weather HERE.
This Staffordshire site has a WEATHER ENGINE section which looks at various aspects of the atmosphere. Produced by T Harris. Also has links to BIOSPHERE and PEDOSPHERE links. Some good GEOLOGY links too.
UK based site called WEATHER ONLINE which has some rather useful information. It has weather data for lots of locations, as you'd expect, plus details on how the temperature has changed at lots of locations throughout the day, and a good clickable map which links through to climate information. Recommended.
Try the HURRICANE HUNTERS!
The COOL WEATHER site. This has been put together by Paul Swinhoe. This is aimed at providing weather information. It has 4 useful sections: Meteorology provides an introduction to the theory of meteorology and has some useful notes, Weather Stations shows how weather data are collected and recorded, and gives a full explanation of weather codes and symbols, Archive gives weather data for several years (from Wolstanton in Staffordshire) and also made a start on a bank of teaching / learning materials, and Links is obvious. Also has information on clouds and downloads.
An excellent place to visit is METLINK's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 CLICKS. This has a series of activities which are based on external web links. Start by clicking on a range of areas of the site, and you will be able to explore a range of areas: EXPLORE the METLINK World, HOT and COLD (recording the temperature at different locations around the world), SAME LATITUDE, DIFFERENT TEMPERATURE ?, SAME COUNTRY, DIFFERENT TEMPERATURE ?, UK TEMPERATURE PAIRS, WEATHER CAMS etc. Recommended.
One of the areas which has to be studied is the effects of drought on human activity. A recent story in the papers was useful as it explained how the Rio Grande on the USA / Mexico border has dried to a trickle following a drought, and this has meant that illegal immigrants no longer have to get their backs (or their fronts) wet - giving US immigration a lot of headaches.
For the latest on USA conditions, go to the DROUGHT MONITOR. This is updated on a weekly basis. There are several classes of drought: here's the CLASSIFICATION used by the USA.
For a detailed investigation of the atmosphere, radiosondes are used. Used to have one in the department that had washed up on Brancaster Beach in Norfolk. These produce RAOB data which are then turned into skew T plots. The process is explained HERE. WE will be looking at Tephigrams which are a simplified version of the upper air plots used in forecasting. The name comes from Temperature and Height, but they are a little more complicated than that.
This ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE NETWORK site has a series of tutorials, which are called 'GCSE level', but would make a great starting point for you if you're not sure about some of the main themes.
They have 'tutorials' (more like brief information sheets) on the following themes: AIR MASSES, FRONTS, ANTICYCLONES etc.
Need weather data ? Based close to Hertfordshire, or want to contrast it with your own area ? In that case, go to the ROYSTON WEATHER DATA page, at Iceni.org.uk. This excellent collection of weather data has information on all the usual suspects for the last few years, and has features on the great drought of 1976 with details of temperatures over the period of the heat-wave. Well done to Richard Barker, and others involved in putting together the site. Also has some excellent photos of meteorological interest. Recommended.
Need weather information on the weather in North Staffordshire ? (it's possible..) - go to the CHESTERTON site where you can get an update on the recent weather.
Picture illustrating the effect of aspect. The snow on one side of the valley has disappeared - the other side remains frozen. Peak District: Tansley Dale - picture taken by Mister P - click for enlarged view. A nice image if I do say so myself.