Climate - What is it & What Influences

• Levels of organization

  

  • biosphere = the part of earth that supports life

  • biomes = geographoic areas with own climate, landforms, and biodiversity

    biomes are defined by …

    • abiotic factors (nonliving e.g. soil type, avrg. rainfall)

    • biotic factors (living e.g. plants animals)

• Weather (temperature, precipitation, windpseed, and cloud cover in context of hours/days)

• vs Climate (area’s general patterns of atmospheric conditions over decades or more)

  influenced by

  • solar energy

  • earth’s rotation

  • global patterns of air and water movement (currents and winds)

  • gases in atmosphere

  • earth’s surface features

Wind

• wind patterns casued by uneven heating of earth’s surface by differences in solar radiation

  • differences in density between warm and cool air → movement of air from areas w/ high to low pressure

• Intense solar radiation at equator → Cariolis Effect = describes pattern of deflection (change in trajectory) of objects that travel long distances around Earth

  • objects deflect to right in Northern hemisphere, left in Southern

  • Cariolis Effect explains many general weather patterns

    • air experiences C.E. since Earth rotates making air travel

• 

• Hadley Cells = tropical atmospheric circulations