Weather

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This article is about the atmospheric process. For the geological process, see Weathering. For other uses, see Weather (disambiguation) and Weather systems (disambiguation).
"Fair weather" redirects here. For other uses, see Fairweather (disambiguation).

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Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy.[1] On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the troposphere,[2][3] just below the stratosphere. Weather refers to day-to-day temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions, whereas climate is the term for the averaging of atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time.[4] When used without qualification, "weather" is generally understood to mean the weather of Earth.

Weather is driven by

orbital plane (called the ecliptic), sunlight is incident at different angles at different times of the year. On Earth's surface, temperatures usually range ±40 °C (−40 °F to 104 °F) annually. Over thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbit can affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by Earth, thus influencing long-term climate and global climate change
.

Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. Higher altitudes are cooler than lower altitudes, as most atmospheric heating is due to contact with the Earth's surface while radiative losses to space are mostly constant.

control the weather have occurred throughout history, and there is evidence that human activities
such as agriculture and industry have modified weather patterns.

Studying how the weather works on other planets has been helpful in understanding how weather works on Earth. A famous landmark in the Solar System, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is an anticyclonic storm known to have existed for at least 300 years. However, the weather is not limited to planetary bodies. A star's corona is constantly being lost to space, creating what is essentially a very thin atmosphere throughout the Solar System. The movement of mass ejected from the Sun is known as the solar wind.

Causes

stratocumulus

On

typhoons and ice storms. Almost all familiar weather phenomena occur in the troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere).[3] Weather does occur in the stratosphere and can affect weather lower down in the troposphere, but the exact mechanisms are poorly understood.[5]

Weather occurs primarily due to air pressure, temperature and

systems in the mid-latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet stream flow (see baroclinity).[8] Weather systems in the tropics, such as monsoons or organized thunderstorm
systems, are caused by different processes.

NOAA; 20 January 2016).[9]

Because the Earth's

Effect of sun angle on climate).[10] This effect causes seasons. Over thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbital parameters affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by the Earth and influence long-term climate. (See Milankovitch cycles).[11]

The uneven solar heating (the formation of zones of temperature and moisture gradients, or frontogenesis) can also be due to the weather itself in the form of cloudiness and precipitation.[12] Higher altitudes are typically cooler than lower altitudes, which is the result of higher surface temperature and radiational heating, which produces the adiabatic lapse rate.[13][14] In some situations, the temperature actually increases with height. This phenomenon is known as an inversion and can cause mountaintops to be warmer than the valleys below. Inversions can lead to the formation of fog and often act as a cap that suppresses thunderstorm development. On local scales, temperature differences can occur because different surfaces (such as oceans, forests, ice sheets, or human-made objects) have differing physical characteristics such as reflectivity, roughness, or moisture content.

Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. A hot surface warms the air above it causing it to expand and lower the density and the resulting surface

Coriolis effect.[16] The simple systems thus formed can then display emergent behaviour to produce more complex systems and thus other weather phenomena. Large scale examples include the Hadley cell while a smaller scale example would be coastal breezes
.

The

predictions more than about two weeks ahead, imposing an upper limit to potential for improved prediction skill.[19]

Shaping the planet Earth

Main article: Weathering

Weather is one of the fundamental processes that shape the Earth. The process of weathering breaks down the rocks and soils into smaller fragments and then into their constituent substances.

chemical reactions that can affect the surface further (such as acid rain), and sodium and chloride ions (salt) deposited in the seas/oceans. The sediment may reform in time and by geological forces into other rocks and soils. In this way, weather plays a major role in erosion of the surface.[21]

Effect on humans

Further information: Biometeorology

Weather, seen from an anthropological perspective, is something all humans in the world constantly experience through their senses, at least while being outside. There are socially and scientifically constructed understandings of what weather is, what makes it change, the effect it has on humans in different situations, etc.[22] Therefore, weather is something people often communicate about. The National Weather Service has an annual report for fatalities, injury, and total damage costs which include crop and property. They gather this data via National Weather Service offices located throughout the 50 states in the United States as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. As of 2019, tornadoes have had the greatest impact on humans with 42 fatalities while costing crop and property damage over 3 billion dollars.[23]

Effects on populations

Category 3 hurricane when it struck although it had been a category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico
.

The weather has played a large and sometimes direct part in

Gulf coast elsewhere across the United States, becoming the largest diaspora in the history of the United States.[26]

The Little Ice Age caused crop failures and famines in Europe. During the period known as the Grindelwald Fluctuation (1560–1630), volcanic forcing events[27] seem to have led to more extreme weather events.[28] These included droughts, storms and unseasonal blizzards, as well as causing the Swiss Grindelwald Glacier to expand. The 1690s saw the worst famine in France since the Middle Ages. Finland suffered a severe famine in 1696–1697, during which about one-third of the Finnish population died.[29]

Forecasting

Main article: Weather forecasting
Forecast of surface pressures five days into the future for the north Pacific, North America, and the north Atlantic Ocean as on 9 June 2008

Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the

quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will evolve.[31]

Once an all-human endeavor based mainly upon changes in barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky condition,[32][33] forecast models are now used to determine future conditions. On the other hand, human input is still required to pick the best possible forecast model to base the forecast upon, which involves many disciplines such as pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and knowledge of model biases.

The chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, the error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as of the difference in current time and the time for which the forecast is being made (the range of the forecast) increases. The use of ensembles and model consensus helps to narrow the error and pick the most likely outcome.[34][35][36]

There are a variety of end users to weather forecasts. Weather warnings are important forecasts because they are used to protect life and property.

precipitation are important to agriculture,[39][40][41][42] and therefore to commodity traders within stock markets. Temperature forecasts are used by utility companies to estimate demand over coming days.[43][44][45]

In some areas, people use weather forecasts to determine what to wear on a given day. Since outdoor activities are severely curtailed by heavy rain, snow and the wind chill, forecasts can be used to plan activities around these events and to plan ahead to survive through them.

Tropical weather forecasting is different from that at higher latitudes. The sun shines more directly on the tropics than on higher latitudes (at least on average over a year), which makes the tropics warm (Stevens 2011). And, the vertical direction (up, as one stands on the Earth's surface) is perpendicular to the Earth's axis of rotation at the equator, while the axis of rotation and the vertical are the same at the pole; this causes the Earth's rotation to influence the atmospheric circulation more strongly at high latitudes than low latitudes. Because of these two factors, clouds and rainstorms in the tropics can occur more spontaneously compared to those at higher latitudes, where they are more tightly controlled by larger-scale forces in the atmosphere. Because of these differences, clouds and rain are more difficult to forecast in the tropics than at higher latitudes. On the other hand, the temperature is easily forecast in the tropics, because it does not change much.[46]

Modification

The aspiration to

Fangshan District recording a rainfall of 25 millimeters.[48]

Whereas there is inconclusive evidence for these techniques' efficacy, there is extensive evidence that human activity such as agriculture and industry results in inadvertent weather modification:[47]

The effects of inadvertent weather modification may pose serious threats to many aspects of civilization, including ecosystems, natural resources, food and fiber production, economic development, and human health.[51]

Microscale meteorology

atmospheric phenomena smaller than mesoscale, about 1 km or less. These two branches of meteorology are sometimes grouped together as "mesoscale and microscale meteorology" (MMM) and together study all phenomena smaller than synoptic scale; that is they study features generally too small to be depicted on a weather map. These include small and generally fleeting cloud "puffs" and other small cloud features.[52]

Extremes on Earth

In recent decades, new high temperature records have substantially outpaced new low temperature records on a growing portion of Earth's surface[53]
Main articles: Extremes on Earth and List of weather records

On Earth, temperatures usually range ±40 °C (100 °F to −40 °F) annually. The range of climates and latitudes across the planet can offer extremes of temperature outside this range. The coldest air temperature ever recorded on Earth is −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F), at

Dallol, Ethiopia.[55] The coldest recorded average annual temperature was −55.1 °C (−67.2 °F) at Vostok Station, Antarctica.[56]

The coldest average annual temperature in a permanently inhabited location is at Eureka, Nunavut, in Canada, where the annual average temperature is −19.7 °C (−3.5 °F).[57]

The windiest place ever recorded is in Antarctica, Commonwealth Bay (George V Coast). Here the gales reach 199 mph (320 km/h).[58] Furthermore, the greatest snowfall in a period of twelve months occurred in Mount Rainier, Washington, US. It was recorded as 31,102 mm (102.04 ft) of snow.[59]

Extraterrestrial within the Solar System

Jupiter's Great Red Spot in February 1979, photographed by the uncrewed Voyager 1 NASA space probe.

Studying how the weather works on other planets has been seen as helpful in understanding how it works on Earth.[60] Weather on other planets follows many of the same physical principles as weather on Earth, but occurs on different scales and in atmospheres having different chemical composition. The Cassini–Huygens mission to Titan discovered clouds formed from methane or ethane which deposit rain composed of liquid methane and other organic compounds.[61] Earth's atmosphere includes six latitudinal circulation zones, three in each hemisphere.[62] In contrast, Jupiter's banded appearance shows many such zones,[63] Titan has a single jet stream near the 50th parallel north latitude,[64] and Venus has a single jet near the equator.[65]

One of the most famous landmarks in the

extrasolar planet HD 189733 b, which is thought to have easterly winds moving at more than 9,600 kilometres per hour (6,000 mph).[69]

Space weather

Aurora Borealis
Main article: Space weather

Weather is not limited to planetary bodies. Like all stars, the

aurorae,[71] and can play havoc with electrically sensitive systems such as electricity grids and radio signals.[72]

See also

References

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External links

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