Exam 2: Weather, Climate, and Climate Change

What are some of the temperature variations on Earth?

When water goes from solid to liquid to gas, ________.

Two ranges of wavelengths, shortwave energy and longwave energy are most important for understanding how solar energy affects the atmosphere.

________ is a circulation change in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that occurs every few years.

Water plays a central role in Earth's energy budget, through a process called latent heat exchange.

________, which tells us how wet air is, is the actual water content of the air compared to how much water the air could potentially hold, expressed as a percentage.

This process transfers tremendous amounts of energy from Earth's surface to the atmosphere, from low latitudes to high ones, and it is also the mechanism most influential in causing precipitation.

Which of the is not one of the major ways in which energy exchanges occur?

Energy absorbed at ground level is transferred back to the atmosphere and then to space via longwave radiation, convection, and latent heat exchange.

What is radiation and what role does it play in the transfer of energy in the atmosphere?

The difference between summer and winter temperatures is smallest on land areas, and especially toward the western parts of continents in low latitudes.

Hurricanes' greatest threat to humans is in tropical and subtropical coastal areas, on the eastern margins of the continents and in southern Asia.

Which of the following is not true of the area of the Polar High?

What are tropical cyclones and what conditions are needed for their development?

What causes convection and what role does it play in the adiabatic process?

In a midlatitude cyclone, air is drawn toward the center of low pressure from both the warm and the cold sides of the polar front.