Short Answer Questions (questions are equally weighted)
World Weather on a day in July: If you moved to Australia or New Zealand, your daily weather map might seem a bit crazy if you're used to thinking about things in the northern hemisphere. Latitude increases as you move toward the bottom of the map, but the prevailing westerlies still move from left to right across the map and so do the cyclonic storms. The map, as compared with one in the northern hemisphere, is flipped top-to-bottom, but not left-to-right. This takes some getting used to, but will be easier after you have completed this lab.
Attached is a composite daily weather map for a typical day in July or August, when it is summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern.
1. How many low-pressure centers are shown on this map?
2. How many high-pressure centers are shown?
3. How many lows fall into each of the following classes?
a) Middle-latitude cyclones
b) Tropical cyclones
c) Weak lows of the equatorial trough
4. At what approximate latitude is each of the following located? (give the approximate center of each; for this you may want to consult another map of the world with latitude lines)
a) Equatorial trough (ITC)
b) Subtropical cells of high pressure in the northern hemisphere
c) Subtropical cells of high pressure in the southern hemisphere
d) Middle-latitude cyclone centers in the northern hemisphere
e) Middle-latitude cyclone centers in the southern hemisphere
5. Of the middle latitude cyclones shown on this map, how many are occluded and how many are open?
Longer Answer Questions (questions are equally weighted)
NOAA - Tropical Weather: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Hurricane Center web site is an excellent resource for tracking Atlantic cyclone activity. Take a look at this site, which you can link to here (https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/). Note all the great information you can get from this web page. Now click on Educational Resources at the top of the page, and then scoll down to find a link to NWS JetStream - Introduction to Tropical Weather under "Tropical Weather and Hurricane Learning Opportunities". Read through this lesson and answer the questions below.
1. How do warm ocean waters power the development of a hurricane?
2. What would the category (Saffir-Simpson scale) and name be of an Atlantic hurricane with sustained winds of 160 miles per hour if it was the fourth tropical cyclone of year 2019? Similarly, what would the category and name be of an Atlantic hurricane with 100 mph winds if it was the 23 tropical cyclone of year 2020 (assuming there were that many)?
3. Briefly describe the multiple ways that coastal area flooding can result from a hurricane?
4. What kind of a relation is there between El Nino events and north Atlantic cyclone activity?