Meteorology/Everyday Weather

General Info
Everday weather is what some would consider the most complex subject for Meteorology, mainly because it covers all bases of Meteorology, even some climate and storm systems.

There is a lot to know for this topic. Some of the major things are:
 * Heat transport
 * Atmospheric Circulation patterns
 * Air masses
 * Fronts
 * Weather forcasting technology
 * Instuments
 * Phenomena

Atmosphere
The atmosphere has 4 layers. It is composed of 78% nitrogen 21% oxygen and 1% trace elements.

The atmospheric layer are in order from sea level to space:
 * 1) Troposphere
 * 2) Stratosphere
 * 3) Mesosphere
 * 4) Thermosphere

you should know how the temperature changes within each layer

The upper troposphere holds the jet stream. The upper Stratosphere has the ozone layer.

Each layer ends at a pause. The troposphere ends at the Tropopause, the statophere ends at the stratopause, the mesosphere ends at the mesopause.

Heat Transport
Let's start off with Heat transport. Heat transport includes the energy budget, convection, and radiation.

The Earth's energy budget is how the earth reflects, absorbs, and distributes energy from the Sun. As you might know from climate, the earth's albedo is around 31%. For those who don't know, the earth's albedo is how much solar radiation the earth reflects. 19% is absorbed by clouds and 51% is absorbed by the earth's surface.



Convection and radiation are both types of energy transfer.

Convection is the transfer of heat by the actual movement of the warmed matter. This is the cause of movement of air in many places. Convection causes warm air to rise and cool air to fall. This ties into most atmospheric circulation patterns like the three cell model. The hadley cell has warm air by the equator so it rises and then falls as it cools, creating circulation patterns. Also, convection causes sea and land breezes. A image of convection



Radiation
 * Electromagnetic waves that directly transport energy through space. This is how the earth can be warmed from the sun.

Air Masses and Winds
An Air mass is a large body of air that has similar moisture and temperature properties throughout the air mass. There are two main air masses that influence weather in the United States and Canada. These air masses are Continental Polar and Maritime Tropical.
 * Continental Polar
 * Originate over Canada
 * Cold
 * Cause of weather during winter months
 * Maritime Tropical
 * Originate over Gulf of Mexico
 * Warm
 * What gives Texas a warm winter

Planetary Winds
Global scale winds are winds that are created in the different Global circulation Cells.

you have the:
 * 1) Polar Easterlies
 * 2) Prevailing Westerlies
 * 3) Trade Winds

The polar easterlies blow from the Pole to 600

The Prevailing Westerlies blow from 600 to 30 0

The Trade Winds blow from 300 to00

Mountain/valley winds
During the day, mountains warm, causing the air over them to be warmer than the air over the valley at the same elevation. Warming the air causes it to rise up, creating a valley wind. During the evening, the air cools due to a loss of surface energy to space. The cool dense air moves down slope as a mountain wind.

Chinook winds
A Chinook wind is a warm dry wind on the leeward side of a mountain. As air descends the leeward side of a mountain, it is compressed and adiabatically heated. Warming the air causes the saturation point to increase, causing a decrease in its relative humidity. The new warm and dry wind moves down slope rapidly, and during the Spring causes substantial melting of mountain snow.

Santa Ana winds
Santa Ana winds are warm and dry winds. Over plateau regions in the desert region of the United States, high pressure pushes the air off the plateaus, forcing the air into narrow mountain valleys. As the air is forced through the valley it compresses and warms. As the air warms the saturation point rises and its relative humidity drops.

Fronts
Five Types
 * 1) Stationary Front
 * 2) Cold Front
 * 3) Warm Front
 * 4) Occluded Front
 * 5) Dry Line


 * 1) Stationary Fronts
 * 2) forms when a warm/cold front stops moving
 * 3) noticeable temperature change and/or shift in wind direction; is normally observed when you cross from one side of the front to the other
 * 4) Cold front
 * 5) Area where cold air is replacing warm air
 * 6) Air cold and dry
 * 7) Normally fast moving
 * 8) Warm Front
 * 9) Warm moist Air
 * 10) Area Where warm air is replacing cold air
 * 11) Occluded Front
 * 12) where a cold front meets a warm front
 * 13) normally formed by a cyclone
 * 14) Dry line
 * 15) moisture boundary
 * 16) commonly found just east of the Rocky Mountains
 * 17) extremely rare east of the Mississippi River

Clouds
For the event you need to be able to identify clouds and weather that come with each cloud. Cloud prefixes tell you where the clouds are located.

"cirr-", like cirrus clouds, can be located at high levels

"alto-", like altostratus, can be found at middle levels

Cloud types are classifies by height of the ground these are three of the classifications This is a list identifying which clouds go in which layer. I found these from "The cloud book: how to understand the skies" by Richard Hamblyn
 * Upper Clouds
 * 9000 meters
 * Cirus clouds
 * Intermediate Clouds
 * 3000-7000 meters
 * Altocumulus
 * Lower Clouds
 * 2000 meters
 * Nimbostratus
 * High Fogs
 * Under 1000 meters
 * 1) Low Clouds
 * 2) Stratocumulus
 * 3) Stratus
 * 4) Cumulus
 * 5) Cumulonimbus
 * 6) Medium Clouds
 * 7) Altocumulus
 * 8) Altostratus
 * 9) Nimbostratus
 * 10) High clouds
 * 11) Cirrus
 * 12) Cirrocumulus
 * 13) Cirrostratus

Great Cloud page http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/cld/cldtyp/home.rxml

Great Cloud book is "The cloud book: how to understand the skies" by Richard Hamblyn



Forcasting
There are many ways to forecast, but the simplest way is to take today's weather and say that tomorrow is going to be the same. This can be called the Persistence method.

The next method can be called the trends method. It relies on mathematics to get the forecast. This method involves being able to get a accurate measerment of the speed at which the weather system is moving and plugging the numbers into the speed formula (S=d/t) and determining the time at which the system will be at your position.

Here is an example of the trend model:

The Climatology Method is another easy way of forecasting. This method involves averaging weather statistics accumulated over many years to make a forecast.

The Analog Method is a more complicated method of producing a forecast. It involves examining today's forecast scenario and remembering a day in the past when the weather scenario looked very similar. Than you would predict that the weather in this forecast will behave similar to the day in the past.

Phenomena
There are many weather phenomena here they are the major ones

How To read weather maps/satellite imagery
We are going to start off with the very basic weather map the kind that you will most likely see at competition:
 * 1) Start by identifying the different pressure zones on the map. Above it is already done but if it wasn't marked look for sections that have a circle with a very high or low pressure.
 * 2) Look for fronts. This can be done by looking at the station ball symbols. (those are the yellow circles with the tails the tails indicate wind direction) look and find a sudden change in wind direction/pressure that will normally indicate a front. I marked where I believe a front to be.

There are many lines on this map. Each one means something:
 * The blue lines are isobars which mean that they are lines of constant pressure.
 * The yellow circles with "tails" are called station ball symbols of station models; they are explained in the next section.

Something else you might see on a weather map is a isotherm, which is a line of constant temperature.

Station Models


This image is a station model. It can tell you many different things, like wind speed, wind direction, temperature, dew point, current weather, cloud cover, and pressure, given that you know how to read and interpret it. Some symbols have more information than others on them, but here is a basic overview:


 * The 48 is the current temperature
 * The 45 is the dew point
 * The "whatever" that is in between the two numbers is the current weather. On this one it is a light rain.



This is what tells you information about the wind. The direction the stick faces shows the wind direction, and how many lines on the end of it show the wind speed. A half line signifies five knots, a full line ten knots, and a bold line 50 knots.



This indicates how much cloud cover there is. There are nine choices:
 * 1) clear (0%)
 * 2) 1/8 (12.5%)
 * 3) 1/4 (25%)
 * 4) 3/8 (37.5%)
 * 5) 1/2 (50%)
 * 6) 5/8 (62.5%)
 * 7) 3/4 (75%)
 * 8) 7/8 (87.5%)
 * 9) overcast (100%)

Map Symbols
this is from here:http://www.sover.net/~redcamp/wxplegend.gif

METAR
This is a way that meteorologists convey what is happening at a point on Earth. It is a very abbreviated language. Here is an example of METAR:

KCLL 312253Z 14007G15KT 10SM CLR 31/15 A2990 RMK AO2 SLP120 T03110150

all of this means something, you just have to know what the abbreviations mean.

Zulu is a time measurement based off of a 24-hour clock

here is a more in depth METAR guide: http://www.met.tamu.edu/class/metar/quick-metar.html

Terms To Know
Some basic terms

{|class="sortable" !Term !Definition !Absolute Humidity !Absolutely Stable Atmosphere !Absolutely unstable atmosphere !Adiabatic process !Air Mass !Air Pressure !Albedo !Black body !Celsius scale !Cloud Burst !Cut off low !daily Range of temperatures !Derecho !Doppler lidar !Doppler shift !Downburst !Dry adiabatic Rate !Eddy !
 * mass of water vapor in a volume of air
 * Atmospheric condition that occurs when the environmental lapse rate is less than moist adiabatic rate
 * Atmospheric condition that occurs when the environmental lapse rate is greater than the dry adiabatic rate
 * Possess that takes place without transfer of heat between systems,compression results in heating,expansion results in cooling
 * A large body of air that has similar characteristics throughout it
 * pressure exerted by a mass of air at a given point
 * Percent of radiation being reflected by substance
 * hypothetical object that absorbs all radiation that strikes it
 * Temperature scale where zero=freezing and 100=boiling
 * Sudden heavy rainfall
 * cold upper-level low that has dissipated out of basic westerly flows
 * difference between maximum and minimum temperature
 * strong damaging straight line winds associated with a thunderstorm
 * a radar that uses light beams to determine velocity of objects by using Doppler shift
 * Change in frequency of waves that occurs when emmiter or observer is moving toward or away from each other
 * severe downdraft that can be experienced beneath a severe thunderstorm
 * rate if change in temperature in a rising or desending unsaturated air parcel.rate is about 10oper 1000m
 * A small volume of air that acts differently than surrounding air

Links
This is a great meteorology site and some of the images on this page have come from it: http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/home.rxml