Temperature controls
- 1. Temperature Controls By: Hannah Barber
- 2. Vocabulary: • Albedo- The fraction of total radiation that is reflected by any surface. • Isotherm- Lines that connect points that have the same temperature.
- 3. Key terms: • Factors other than latitude that exert a strong influence on temperature include heating of land and water, altitude geographic position, cloud cover, and ocean currents. • Land heats more rapidly and to higher temperatures than water. Land also cools more rapidly and to lower temperatures than water. • Many clouds have a high albedo, and therefore reflect a significant portion of the sunlight that strikes them back to space.
- 4. Temperature: • Temperature is one of the basic elements of weather and climate. There are many instruments that help you determine the temperature and many ways to describe the temperature.
- 5. Why temperatures vary: • A temperature control is any factor that causes temperature to vary from place to place and from time to time. • Seasonal temperature changes happen as the sun’s vertical rays move toward and away from a particular latitude during the year.
- 6. Land and water: • The largest contrast of temperature is between land and water. The temperature variations are considerably greater over land than over water. • In the Northern Hemisphere, the water accounts are 61% water and 39% land. • In the Southern Hemisphere, the water accounts are 81% and 19% land.
- 7. Geographic Position: • The geographic setting can greatly influence temperatures experienced at a specific location.
- 8. Altitude: • As you go up in altitude, the temperature decreases but as you go down in altitude the temperature will increase.
- 9. Cloud Cover and Albedo: • The extent of cloud cover is a factor that influences temperatures in the lower atmosphere. By reducing the amount of incoming solar radiation, the maximum temperatures on a cloud-covered day will be lower than on a day when clouds are absent and the sky is clear. • At night, clouds have the opposite effect. Clouds act as a blanket by absorbing outgoing radiation emitted by Earth and reradiating a portion of it back to the surface.
- 10. World Distribution of Temperature • Near the equator is where temperatures are hotter and near the poles is where the temperatures are cooler. • Latitude controls on incoming solar radiation, which in turn heats Earth’s surface and the atmosphere above it.