The sun's light and heat are less concentrated at higher latitudes. In addition, at the equator the sunlight travels straight down through the atmosphere, but near the poles it travels through a thicker layer air where more of the light is reflected, absorbed, or scattered and less reaches the ground. This is why the equator is hot and the poles are cold. Because of the great quantity of heat delivered to the equator it is a zone of warm, rising air. It absorbs much water vapour from the oceans and land vegetation through evaporation.
What the Mountain Environment is like? (Weather) The climate is not the same throughout the biome (community) because there are places nearer to the equator than others. The Andes are separated into three natural regions: the southern, central, and northern regions. In the northern region, it is hotter because it is closest to the equator. There are rain forests in this region, due to the more humid, rainy climate.
The oceans play an important role in determining the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Changes in ocean circulation may affect the climate through the movement of CO2 into or out of the atmosphere. Earth orbital changes - The earth makes one full orbit around the sun each year. It is tilted at an angle of 23.5° to the perpendicular plane of its orbital path. Changes in the tilt of the earth can lead to small but climatically important changes in the strength of the seasons, more tilt means warmer summers
Normal conditions, before El Nino events occur, strong trade winds move surface waters westward. As this occurs the water becomes warmer. When water becomes warmer it causes the air to rise and cool causing torrential rainfall. When El Nino occurs there a warm upper ocean layer, which is poor in nutrients and a cold lower ocean layer, which is rich in nutrients. The cold water is brought when the surface current flows westward in a process known as upwelling.
Some of the radiation are absorbed, reflected or scattered, while the rest reaches the surface and warms the land and the oceans. Because the earth’s surface is cooler than the sun, the earth emits long-wave, largely infra red, terrestrial radiation back to the atmosphere where much is absorbed by greenhouse gases since these gases are more efficient in trapping long wave radiation. Some of the greenhouse gases include water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chloro-fluoro carbons and ozone. When these gases in the atmosphere absorb terrestrial radiation, they warm, but eventually they radiate this energy away. Some of this long wave terrestrial radiation travels upward, where it may be reabsorbed by other gas molecules.
The west coast is much drier than the central highlands and east coast due to the winds losing humidity by the time they reach this side of island. The southwest and south tip of the island are semidesert (Geography of
The slower molecules gain more thermal energy and collide with other molecules in the cooler object. This process continues until heat energy from the warmer object spreads throughout the cooler object. Some substances conduct heat more easily than others. Solids are better conductor than liquids and liquids are better conductor than gases. Metals are very good conductors of heat, while air is very poor conductor of heat.
The tropical climate is characterized by constant high temperatures. All twelve months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm (2.4 in), whereas in the savanna climate, the annual precipitation is contrastingly 25 mm. In the dry climates (group B) contains: arid and semiarid climates. Desert regions on the West coast are much cooler, due to the nearby presence of cold ocean currents and frequent cloud cover. The mesothermal climate (group C) consists: mediterranean, humid-subtropic, and oceanic climates.
The Earth’s average temperature has risen 0.6°C, while areas in the Arctic have risen up to 3.0°C in the last 20th century (Gardiner, 2008). Increasing temperatures have already caused changes in the Arctic such as; sea ice covering the Arctic has decreased in area and thickness due to melting of ice and snow, the warming of permafrost, snow cover area has also decreased, and ice on the rivers will freeze later during fall and break up earlier in spring. But why are these Polar Regions more vulnerable to climate change? This is due to the light colour of snow and ice and high albedo, which reflects the solar energy back into space. Due to the increase in greenhouse gases less solar energy is reflected back into space and more solar radiation is absorbed by the Earth causing the increase in ice and snow melting (Main & Ahlenius, 2011).
Furthermore, more and more ice from glaciers and polar ice caps is melting during summer, and not being balanced back out in winter months. During the summer, these formations will naturally melt a little, however, due to the increase in temperatures, more of the ice is melting during this time, and less is being replenished as snow over these ice formations during the winter months, in which