Tools for Teaching Meteorology
Weather forecasting has never been tougher these days. Meteorologist can sure tell you the weather forecast decently for tomorrow. It’s after two days that it gets difficult because of the computer models do not do well because there are so many points of data that can be entered in. Some models are designed to handle different terrains better than others. Learning about computer models is not the only important thing; meteorologists also must learn physics and high level math, Calculus specifically. Data Loggers, pressure switches in a test chamber, specialized rain gauges, cloud charts are just some of the many tools professors use to teach their students how to understand the weather. There are just so many dynamics when forecasting the weather that it’s almost impossible to be right even in the twenty four hour future. Most of the time they get it right, the tools and the research are taking huge steps each day.
Pressure plays a big part in what drives our weather, the air is a fluid dynamic much like the ocean is fluidly flowing. The air is actually much more dynamic than our ocean. Vacuum switches and Vacuums are used to help show how thinning out air pressure in one area of the world affects the pressure elsewhere in a meteorology class. Air can thicken up in one part of the atmosphere and thin out in another area and when these two areas get close together, high pressure and low pressure respectively, it creates a gradient that can cause high winds between the two areas. These areas can also be associated with warm and cold arctic air as well.
In the United States, Cold fronts form from when a low pressure system off the coast of Alaska, typically a arctic cold pool of air, moves over the western United States and starts to spin a certain way due to the friction from the rocky mountains. This starts a particular development and once it gets out over the plains where there is typically a warm moist air due to the gulf sits. This cold front starts to become longer and runs into the high pressure out in front of it and creates a High pressure switch. Models handle the cold fronts great when they get out over the plains because the land is flat and predictable. It’s the Rocky Mountains where it has the problems. So many different size mountains and eddies that it creates in the wind patterns wreak havoc with the computer models and tools of meteorology. Showing this in the classroom in vacuum chambers and fluid pools is quite useful in proving that computers are not at the point where they can better predict what the weather is going to do four days from now.
Understanding and recognizing weather movements is incredibly important when teaching students that looking at the synoptic part of meteorology and using their own mind is still better than the models. Dynamics and equations are still great and describe exactly how the atmosphere work by there are infinite points on the world to plug in to get a perfect forecast and computers just cannot handle that. In a largely unpredictable world, pressure and vacuum switches help to play an important part in understanding and consequentially improving our understandings of weather.
Processing your request, Please wait....
