Direction of Wind
Name: ______Period: ______Date: ______Essential Question: How is wind affected by temperature differences and earth’s rotation?
Instructions: Watch the video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--faa2w_NJo to answer the following questions.
Wind is caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere. Since the Earth is rotating, the air does not flow directly from high to low pressure, but it is deflected to the right in the Northern Hemisphere; to the left in the Southern Hemisphere, this is known as Coriolis effect. http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_causes_wind.htm
1. What causes wind? ______2. Why does the warm air rise? ______3. Why does the cold air sink? ______
4. Warm air is ( low, high) ______pressure and it rises. 5. Cold air is ( low, high) ______pressure and it ( rises, sinks) ______. 6. What happens to the rising air? ______
7.What is wind? ______
8. Wind comes from the energy of the ______. 9. What causes sea breeze? ______
10. Sea breeze happens during the ( day, night) ______.
11. Water is ( colder, warmer)______than land during the day.
12. What is land breeze? ______
13. Wind blows from high pressure to ( low pressure, medium pressure)______
14. In land breeze air currents move from (land, water)______to (land, water)______
15. Coastal areas receive more rain and thunderstorms than the inland because of (evaporation, air pressure) ______filling up clouds.
16. Where can you find more vegetation ( near the shoreline, mountainside)? ______17. What is the Coriolis effect? ( Read the paragraph above) ______
Sea and Land Breezes describe the wind that blows onshore from sea to land during the day and blows Day-sea breeze Night-land breeze offshore in the evening.
Why do I care? During the summer, the sea breezes are stronger than in winter because of the large temperature differences between land and ocean water that time of year. The fronts caused by the sea breezes along the coast can provide a trigger to daily thunderstorm activity in coastal areas, particularly along the peninsula of Florida.
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/edu/k12/.breezes
Instructions: Use the figure above to answer questions
18. When does sea breeze happen (day, night)? ______19. When does land breeze happen ( day, night)?______20. How are sea breeze and land breeze described? ______21. At daytime, which heats up faster or has low pressure( land, sea)? ______22. At nighttime, which heats up faster or has low pressure ( land, sea)? ______23. Why do we experience more thunderstorms during the spring and summer? ______
Instructions: Watch the video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcPs_OdQOYU or read the paragraph below to answer the following questions.
The Coriolis effect is the apparent curvature of global winds, ocean currents, and everything else that moves freely across the Earth’s surface. If not for the Earth’s rotation, global winds would blow in straight north- south lines. What actually happens is that global winds blow diagonally. The Coriolis effect influences wind direction around the world in this way: in the Northern Hemisphere it curves winds to the right; in the Southern Hemisphere it curves them left. The exception is with low pressure systems. In these systems there is a balance between the Coriolis effect and the pressure gradient force and the winds flow in reverse. http://www.universetoday.com/73828/what-is-the-coriolis-effect/#ixzz2nGCm1d1a
24. What is the Coriolis effect? ______25. What would be the direction of the global winds if the earth is not rotating? ______26. How does Coriolis effect influence the direction of wind the Northern Hemisphere? ______27. How does Coriolis effect influence the direction of wind the Southern Hemisphere? ______