In my opinion, today's lesson was quite interesting and it was something like self-study with the assitance of our geog teachers. We tried to explain two important things which were the distribution of the Earth's climate and the reasons why there are seasons on Earth.
Chengxi, Kah Eng and I were in the same group and our task was to discuss and explain the distribution of Earth climate.
From the World map of Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification, there are some things we noticed, some we could explain and some we couldn't or couldn't explain totally:
The nearer to the equator, the hotter it is: Our Earth orbits the Sun in an ellipse motion, it also spins on its own arround an imaginary axis which is tilted 23.5o. As a result, the equator is the part receives the most solar radiation, faraway from the equator, the less solar radiation there is, especially the North and South Poles, where the temperature is usually negative through out the whole year.
The different areas at the same lattitude usually have the same or similar kind of climate due to similar amount of solar radiation received. Moreover, there is symmetry between the Northern Hemisphere's climate and the Southern Hemisphere's climate. For example, (10 N, 20 E) and (10 S, 20 E) are the two places having Aw- Equatorial winter dry due to similar amount of solar radiation they receive as well.
Although equator receives the most amount of solar radiation, that area is not the hottest part on Eart. Deserts in Africa, Australia, Southern Asia and some parts of America are actually the hottest places on Earth, there might be different explanations regarding this phenomenon and we hope to know it the next lesson.
Chengxi also noticed that why the climare of the area connects the North and South of America continent is Am (equatorial monsoonal) and As (equatorial summerdry) even though it is at the same lattitude as the lower part of Sahara desert in Africa. I think one of the reason maybe it is a very thin stripe of land so that it has more contact with the sea, has more water vapor and become less dry....
The circulation of the wind between the two poles and the equator is partly due to the air pressure and the temperature. Air in the North and South Poles is colder, it has higher pressure and it sinks while air in the equator is hotter with lower pressure. Convection causes the cold air in the North and South poles to sink and flow to the equator while hot air near above the equator will rise and flow to the two poles.
Sea currents may affect our Earth's climate distribution as well.
That's all I have noticed about today's lesson, in the next lessons, I hope we can have a better understanding of the climate patterns.
Please comment this entry so I can improve on it :D
Linh :)
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Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteI was in the other group and we tried to explain why there are seasons on Earth. It was quite interesting. I think the seasons and distribution of different types of climate are related in some ways. I'm looking forward to next lesson, where we are all going to teach each other what we've done :)
Thanks for the details. :)
ReplyDeleteI think the actual reason why it is hotter at the equator as compared to at the poles is because the solar radiation at the equator is more intense as compared to the solar radiation at the poles. This is because the solar radiation at the poles is more diffused due to the thicker layer of atmosphere it has to pass through and as we learnt earlier in the lesson on planetary heat balance, more heat is radiated back at the poles too due to processes like back scattering.
i found the temperature in the South pole is lower than the temperature in the North pole, as we can see from the world climate map. It is because in the South pole, there is much land while in the North pole, there is much sea.And the sea can absorbe more heat than the land during the same time-period, right? haha, so interesting. no wonder there are people who live near the North pole.
ReplyDelete-Chengxi:D
This post really opened my eyes!
ReplyDeleteMs. Tang is such a great teacher !!! I'm really looking forward to other lessons where we can self-study, since I believe it is the most effective of all. :D
ReplyDelete