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? _____________________________________________________________________________________ .