Exam 2: Weather, Climate, and Climate Change

The dry-summer Mediterranean climate envelops the Mediterranean region of Europe and parts of northern Africa, lending this climate type its familiar name.

The Southern Hemisphere, where it is summer in January, generally has low pressure over the oceans and high pressure over land.

Processes such as changes in orbital geometry or volcanic eruptions have clearly affected climate in the past, and these explain the dramatic warming of the last 200 years.

What are midlatitude cyclones?

In tropical climates, where strong insolation makes temperatures high, all that is needed for intense daily convectional storms is:

These winds are found on the poleward sides of the subtropical high, circulation is toward the poles.

These are intense, rotating convectional systems that develop over warm ocean areas in the tropics and subtropics, primarily during the warm season.

Daily and seasonal differences in intensity are caused by variations in the ________.

If a 90°F sample of air contains half the water vapor that it could hold at that temperature, its relative humidity is:

________ affect the behavior of energy when it strikes matter: some are reflected, and some are absorbed.

In recent years, concern has grown that with ongoing climate change, certain parts of the Earth atmosphere system may be reaching tipping points, or conditions in which the pace of change may increase rapidly and irreversibly.

In polar high-pressure zones, the air is cold, contains very little moisture, and convection and precipitation are limited.

________ occurs when the horizontal winds move air against mountain ranges, forcing air to rise as it passes over the mountains.

________ events are linked to flooding in the U.S. Southwest, droughts in Australia, and reduced rainfall in India.

________ is "in storage" in water and water vapor and describes the heat that controls the state of water.

Sublimation is the process of:

Generally, cooler air temperatures can hold more moisture than warmer air.

The Earth orbits the sun, and through the seasons of the year the tilt of the axis relative to the sun remains the same which helps to affecting both day length and the angle between the sun and Earth's surface.

The ________ because it is a shifting zone between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn where surface winds converge.

________, a prominent feature of ocean currents, are wind-driven circular oceanic flows that mirror the movement of prevailing winds.