Water, Weather, and the Atmosphere
Key ideas about atmospheric structure, latent heat, and what drives storms and winds.
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Questions Covered in This Set
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Troposphere
Lowest layer (0–12 km) where nearly all weather happens; cools with height at about 6.5 °C per km because it is heated from below.
Why does the stratosphere act like a lid on storms?
Ozone absorbs UV directly, so the stratosphere warms with height. Warm-over-cold is stable, so rising thunderstorm tops spread out flat into anvils at the tropopause.
Adiabatic cooling
Rising air expands into lower pressure and cools (~9.8 °C/km when dry) without exchanging heat with its surroundings; sinking air compresses and warms.
Why is the leeward side of a mountain range often a desert?
Air is forced up the windward slope, cools, and drops its moisture as rain; it then descends the far side, compressing and warming, arriving hot and parched (Mojave, Atacama, eastern Patagonia).
Latent heat
Energy stored when water evaporates (~2,260 J per gram) and released when vapour condenses — the power source that fuels thunderstorms and hurricanes.
Why do hurricanes weaken over land?
They are powered by latent heat from evaporating warm ocean water; moving over land cuts off that fuel supply.
Clausius–Clapeyron relation
Saturation vapour pressure rises roughly 7% per °C of warming, so warmer air can hold substantially more water vapour.
Dew point
The temperature at which a cooling air parcel reaches 100% relative humidity; below it, vapour condenses onto aerosols to form cloud.
Three ways to lift air and make clouds
Convection (sun-heated ground), orography (air pushed up a mountain), and frontal lift (one air mass riding over another).
Pressure gradient force
The force that accelerates air from high pressure toward low pressure; Earth's rotation then deflects that moving air (Coriolis effect).
