Weather Forecasting Made Simple
By Stan Yorke
()
About this ebook
Stan Yorke
Stan Yorke is a writer and retired engineer, with a particular interest in historic machinery. His books include English Canals Explained, Steam Engines Explained and Steam Railways Explained.
Read more from Stan Yorke
The Industrial Revolution Explained: Steam, Sparks & Massive Wheels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Steam Engines Explained Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steam Railways Explained Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWindmills and Waterwheels Explained: What They Do and How They Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnglish Canals Explained Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat the Victorians Got Wrong Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Weather Forecasting Made Simple
Related ebooks
Reading the Clouds: How You Can Forecast the Weather Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Field Guide to the Weather: Learn to Identify Clouds and Storms, Forecast the Weather, and Stay Safe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeather Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weather Book: Why It Happens and Where It Comes From Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeteorology of Clouds Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Whys and Whats of Weather Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weather Handbook: The Essential Guide to How Weather is Formed and Develops Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sailor's Book of Weather Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings30-Second Meteorology: The 50 most significant events and phenomena, each explained in half a minute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAtmosphere, Clouds, and Climate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meteorology: Cool Women Who Weather Storms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhether the Weather: Aviation Meteorology from A to Z Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeather Prediction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKnow Your Clouds Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnderstanding the Jet Stream: Clash of the Titans Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Weather Analysis and Forecasting: Applying Satellite Water Vapor Imagery and Potential Vorticity Analysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIntroduction to Meteorology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Dynamics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Synoptic Analysis and Forecasting: An Introductory Toolkit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeteorology; or, Weather Explained Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNotes on Meteorology Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Course in Dynamic Meteorology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat's It Like in Space?: Stories from Astronauts Who've Been There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of Navigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coastal Meteorology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFluid Mechanics of the Atmosphere Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Short Course in Cloud Physics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMapping and Navigation: Explore the History and Science of Finding Your Way with 20 Projects Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCelestial Navigation for the Complete Idiot: A Simple Explanation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Introduction to Atmospheric Gravity Waves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Earth Sciences For You
Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Witch's Yearbook: Spells, Stones, Tools and Rituals for a Year of Modern Magic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Foraging for Survival: Edible Wild Plants of North America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rockhounding for Beginners: Your Comprehensive Guide to Finding and Collecting Precious Minerals, Gems, Geodes, & More Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Make Hand-Drawn Maps: A Creative Guide with Tips, Tricks, and Projects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Acres and Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nuclear War Survival Skills: Lifesaving Nuclear Facts and Self-Help Instructions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science (Transcript) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pocket Guide to Prepping Supplies: More Than 200 Items You Can?t Be Without Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lake Superior Rocks & Minerals Field Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYoung Men and Fire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Answers to Questions You've Never Asked: Explaining the 'What If' in Science, Geography and the Absurd Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Paying the Land Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rockhounding & Prospecting: Upper Midwest: How to Find Gold, Copper, Agates, Thomsonite, and Other Favorites Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Bruce H. Lipton's The Biology of Belief 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Children's Blizzard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South: Shackleton's Endurance Expedition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jellyfish: A Natural History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Weather Forecasting Made Simple
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Weather Forecasting Made Simple - Stan Yorke
The Weather
Basic Rules
Nearly all the energy on Earth comes from the sun, a typical middle-aged star, which contains 99.9% of our solar system’s mass. Some 46% of its radiation is light and a similar amount is near infra red, which we perceive as heat. The rest is in the ultra violet region, which causes us sunburn. The sun also sends out random solar winds, vast eruptions of protons and electrons which are deflected around the Earth by our magnetic field and which we sometimes see as auroras.
For our purposes, what all this means is that our weather and our seasons are initially determined by factors well outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and some knowledge of what happens ‘out there’ is helpful in trying to understand the complexities of weather forecasting.
Seasons diagram. If you follow the earth’s orbit you will see how, in winter, we are in sunlight for a shorter period than we are in summer.
The Seasons
The Earth travels around the sun in an elliptical orbit taking 365 days to complete one circuit, our year. The Earth also spins on its axis once every 24 hours, giving us night and day. However, this axis is tilted at 23.5° to our orbit around the sun, which puts the sun over the northern latitudes in summer and over the south in winter, producing our seasons.
At any one time there is always an area of the Earth that is receiving the full energy radiated from the sun – but as the Earth revolves and moves along its annual orbit this area is also moving in a giant spiral between the Tropic of Cancer (summer in the northern hemisphere) and the Tropic of Capricorn (summer in the southern hemisphere). These changes give us night and day and the steady change from summer to winter and back that we are familiar with, but the effect of this ever-changing radiation on the seas and atmosphere is far more dramatic.
Something like half of the sun’s radiation is absorbed by the land masses and the sea, the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere and cloud systems or reflected directly back into space. Of the energy absorbed, all is eventually radiated back into space either directly from the Earth’s surface (normally at night) or via the clouds, which are made of warmed-up water vapour from the oceans. Over the long term we lose the same amount of heat that we gain from the sun, so that the Earth, as a whole, stays basically constant.
It is the atmospheric conditions that control this delicate balancing act and it is man’s ability to disturb the atmosphere that is at the root of our current concerns over global warming.
It is easy to forget just how thin a layer of atmosphere we inhabit. Whilst technically our atmosphere extends upwards above us for over 100 miles, most of this is quite devoid of air. Man can breath in only the first 2 miles of our atmosphere, which also contains the vast majority of our weather. The next drawing shows the first 15 miles and below are the names given to the layers, their height above us, and what they contain:
The top of the troposphere is called the tropopause and varies in height around the world from around 12 miles at the equator to just over 4 miles at the poles. Note the steady drop in temperature as the altitude increases, but which reverses above the tropopause due to the absorption of ultraviolet radiation by the ozone layer. Most of our clouds form below 20,000 ft, but given the right conditions massive cumulonimbus clouds can climb up to the tropopause.
The air pressure also drops with altitude as there is less and less air pushing down. The average air pressure at sea level is 1013.2 mb (milli-bar) and at around 20 miles the air pressure is almost zero.
The top of the troposphere is called the tropopause and varies in height around the world from