Download
1 / 7
70 likes | 199 Vues
This guide explores various air masses and types of fronts, crucial for understanding weather changes. Air masses, identified as Maritime Polar, Maritime Tropical, Continental Tropical, and Continental Polar, impact temperature and precipitation. It explains how fronts form when these masses meet, influencing weather by creating different patterns. Key insights into cold fronts, warm fronts, occluded fronts, and stationary fronts are included, highlighting their characteristics and the weather phenomena they can produce. Learn about the prevailing westerlies and jet streams that contribute to weather dynamics.
E N D
Types of Air Masses • Maritime Polar – over water, wet, cool. • Maritime Tropical – over water, wet, warm. • Continental Tropical- over continent, dry, warm. • Continental Polar – over continent, dry, cool.
How a Front Forms • When air masses meet, causes weather to changed. • Prevailing Westerlies is a major wind belt over the US, pushes West to East bringing low clouds and showers. • Jet Streams, inside the westerlies, high speed winds above the Earth’s surface. • Fronts: huge masses of air that move across land and oceans that collide with each other, but don’t easily mix.
Types of Fronts • Cold Fronts – Dense and sink. If quicker, slides under the warm front. Causes clouds to form, heavy rain or snow. Arrive quickly. Afterwards, have colder drier air. • Warm fronts – overtakes slower moving cold front, since it is less dense it moves over the cold front, weather is rainy, cloudy for several days. Brings warmer temperature and humidity.
Occluded Front • MOST COMPLEX and Difficult to understands. • Cool mass – Warm Mass –Cool Mass. (this means that warm mass is sandwiched between the cold masses) • Two cooler masses can mix, warm air is cut off, rises, as warm air cools water vapor condenses, weather may turn cloudy and have precipitation.
Stationary Fronts • This is when cold and warm fronts meet, but they can’t budge each other. Water vapor from the warm air condenses. • It may bring many clouds and precipitation.
