Anthony Medeiros

Guiding Questions: Climate Notes

Section 14.1 What is Climate?
1.Define climatology. The study of Earths
climate and the factors that affect past,
present, and future climatic changes.
2.What factors does climate include in
addition to average weather conditions?
Climate also describes annual variations
of temperature, precipitation, wind, and
other weather variables.
3.Give two examples of how climatic data
can be used. Climatic data can indicate
the warmest and coldest temperatures
ever recorded for a location.
4.Why must we exercise caution when using
normals to predict weather? We must use
caution because weather conditions on
any given day might differ widely from
normals.
5.What factors cause climate? Latitude,
topographic effects, and air masses are all
factors that cause climate.
6.Why are coastal areas cooler in the
summer than inland areas? In coastal
areas there a sea breeze that comes off
from the ocean.

Anthony Medeiros

7.Describe the relationship between

temperature and altitude. It gets colder as
you go higher in the troposphere.
8.Figure 14-3 depicts what effect of
orographic lifting that we discussed last
Friday? (HINT: return to those notes!)
Convection occurs and the windward side
is moist and the leeward side is dry.
Section 14.2 Climate Classification
1.Name the system used to classify climates.
What factors does it consider? The
Koeppen classification system and it is
based on the average monthly values of
temperature and precipitation.
2.List the six main climate types. They are
tropical, dry, mild, continental, polar, and
high elevation climates.
3.What climate type do we live in? List its
characteristics. We live in the mild climate
with warm, muggy weather in warm
months, and cold, dry conditions in the
winter and also abundant precipitation all
year.
4.What is a microclimate? Give an example.
A microclimate is a climate of a small area
that can be much different from that of a
larger area surrounding it.

Anthony Medeiros

5.What is the heat island effect and where

does it occur? A heat island is wherein the
climate is warmer than in surrounding rural
areas and it occurs in the presence of
many concrete buildings and large
expanses of asphalt.