A Climatic Introduction

The weather, or climate, has great influence on all things living on a planet. One of the characteristics of climate is that it is constantly changing. The most visible characteristic of climate are clouds moving about the planet driven by coriolis forces.

Atmospheric Pressure Gradient

Atmospheric pressure is not uniform. It decreases with altitude, and most of the pressure is within 2000m of the ground. This table shows the pressures at various altitudes.

Beaufort Wind Scale

The Beauford wind scale relates wind speed to wind force, and lets you know when you are in danger of having your shingles blown of your roof. This table will tell you which windspeed corresponds to which wind force.

The climate is the average of the daily weather for a given area. It is one of these phenomena that is based on a few simple variables (pressure, temperature, humidity), yet due to its many interactions with the environment becomes extremely complex.
The principle of weather is quite simple. Water evaporates from the oceans, rises as clouds, cools off, and falls as rain. If the earth would not rotate, there would be a steady stream of winds, and clouds from the equator to the north, and south poles. Unfortunately for climatologists (but fortunate for the rest of us) the earth does turn.
This turning introduces a sideways motion to the winds, that would otherwise head straight north or south. This motion produces coriolis forces on the air masses, leading to a counter clockwise turning in the northern hemisphere, and a clockwise turning in the southern hemisphere, of the earth. Landmasses introduce extra turbulences, oceans different temperatures, mountains change the course of clouds, and it is easy to see why the subject becomes extremely complex.
It will come as no surprise that it was only with the advent of the theory of chaos that climatology was put on a less shaky mathematical footing. In this section we will examine the basic components of weather, and climate: temperatur, pressure, and humidity. In other words we'll be talking mostly of clouds.