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Speaker 1: Text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer here with how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com, and today I wanted to talk about

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Speaker 1: something I got to do. Those pretty cool just last week,

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Speaker 1: well last week as of the time I'm recording this,

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Speaker 1: I got to go visit the Weather Company to do

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Speaker 1: some interviews about meteorology and also ibm s Watson platform.

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Speaker 1: And it was a really cool experience to actually get

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Speaker 1: to walk around and see the various people who work

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Speaker 1: on weather science and try to figure out what was

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Speaker 1: the weather doing right now and was it going to

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Speaker 1: do next. I even managed to cause some problems for

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Speaker 1: the Weather Channel, but that wasn't entirely my fault. Uh

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Speaker 1: Now to explain us, the Weather Channel and the Weather

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Speaker 1: Company used to be the same entity, but then IBM

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Speaker 1: acquired the product and technology divisions of the Weather Company

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Speaker 1: and they bought those sections, but they didn't buy the

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Speaker 1: television broadcast business. So now they are two independent businesses.

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Speaker 1: One of them is run by IBM, the other one

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Speaker 1: is its own standalone weather broadcast service. That being said,

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Speaker 1: they still work very closely together. The Weather Channel still

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Speaker 1: gets a lot of its data and it's information from uh,

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Speaker 1: the Weather Company, so it's not like they are completely

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Speaker 1: independent of each other, and they both still exist in

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Speaker 1: the same building. They both are located out of the

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Speaker 1: same headquarters building here in Atlanta, Georgia. So there is

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Speaker 1: a Weather Channel studio that is in part of this building,

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Speaker 1: and there's the Weather Company offices that's on different floors

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Speaker 1: of the building, and UH they kind of co occupy

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Speaker 1: space even though they are no longer corporately speaking anyway

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Speaker 1: the same entity. So I thought it'd be fun to

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Speaker 1: do an episode about meteorology and weather models. This is

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Speaker 1: gonna be a two part episode because I have to

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Speaker 1: cover the science behind weather first and then talk about

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Speaker 1: meteorology to let you understand how meteorologists base their forecasts

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Speaker 1: off of weather conditions. You have to understand the complexities

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Speaker 1: of whether before you can really get a grip on

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Speaker 1: what it is that meteorologists do. And so in order

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Speaker 1: to do that, this episode is gonna be a little

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Speaker 1: less about tech and more about science in order for

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Speaker 1: us to have a deeper understanding of meteorology. In the

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Speaker 1: next episode, I should I should also mention We've covered

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Speaker 1: this topic in Tangential Ways and Older Tech Stuff episodes,

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Speaker 1: but it was more than overdue for a revisit. So

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Speaker 1: that's why we're going to talk about it today. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna really look at how weather systems actually work. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And before I get too far, I guess I should

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Speaker 1: actually explain what I meant when I said I caused

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Speaker 1: some problems for the Weather Channel. So while I was

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Speaker 1: at their headquarters, I was getting ready to shoot a

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Speaker 1: video interview with a man named Dale Eck, who is

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Speaker 1: the director of the Weather Forecast Center for the Weather Company.

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Speaker 1: So this guy is the head meteorologist in charge. He's

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Speaker 1: been doing work in meteorology for thirty years, and he

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Speaker 1: has a desk that's very close to the broadcast studio

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Speaker 1: for the Weather Channel. The broadcast studio has glass walls,

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Speaker 1: so you can see right through the walls. If you

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Speaker 1: ever watch a broadcast on the Weather Channel and they

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Speaker 1: shoot from inside the studio, you'll see people walking in

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Speaker 1: the background. You'll see desks and monitors and lots of

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Speaker 1: of colorful imagery because people have got a lot of

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Speaker 1: weather maps up in the background, so all of that's real.

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Speaker 1: Those are the actual people who work at the company. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and that's where we were shooting our videos. We were

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Speaker 1: shooting off to one side of this studio, and while

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Speaker 1: we're getting ready to shoot, we had set up the camera.

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Speaker 1: I was miked. We had a shotgun mike so that

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Speaker 1: we can pick up Mr X his his contributions. We

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Speaker 1: were off to one side of the studio, so we're

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Speaker 1: up against where the glass walls are, but we weren't

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Speaker 1: directly across from where the cameras were set up. Um,

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Speaker 1: they did have sets where they could pivot around where

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Speaker 1: we would have essentially been in the background for those

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Speaker 1: those shots if they had set something up, but they

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Speaker 1: were mostly shooting directly against the back wall of the

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Speaker 1: studio and we were on one of the sidewalls. So

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Speaker 1: we're getting ready to shoot, and one of the the

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Speaker 1: employees over at the Weather Company very helpfully pointed out

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Speaker 1: a bank of light switches that were in control of

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Speaker 1: production lights. So flipping those switches would turn several lights

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Speaker 1: on in the area we were standing in That would

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Speaker 1: end up providing a lot more light for our video,

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Speaker 1: and that is really important if you're shooting video, you

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Speaker 1: need good lighting. So after being told about them, we

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Speaker 1: turned them on. We being my producer, turned them on,

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Speaker 1: and you know, he was essentially told to do it,

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Speaker 1: so that's what he did. And it didn't take very

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Speaker 1: long before a floor manager for the Weather Channel, very

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Speaker 1: calmly walked up and asked us to knock that off.

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Speaker 1: Although I should say she was incredibly friendly and professional.

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Speaker 1: She wasn't mean about it at all, but explained that

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Speaker 1: the light that we had created was bleeding into the set.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's a glass wall, lights just passing right

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Speaker 1: through it, so it was affecting the shot for the

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Speaker 1: actual Weather Channel, you know, the nationally televised Weather Channel broadcast.

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Speaker 1: So my little YouTube video that I was shooting was

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Speaker 1: impacting a nationally broadcast television scene. So that was a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a Oopsie Daisy moment for me and

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Speaker 1: my team. The nice thing is it was probably pretty

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Speaker 1: subtle and it probably didn't have that big of an

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Speaker 1: impact at all, but still it made us feel like

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Speaker 1: we were kind of jerk faces. And if you were

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Speaker 1: watching the Weather Channel last week or this would that

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Speaker 1: would have been, um, you know, this is June right now,

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Speaker 1: so it would have been June Thursday. If you were

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Speaker 1: watching the Weather Channel, you know, trying to keep up

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Speaker 1: to date with Tropical Storm Cindy, and you were wondering,

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Speaker 1: why is the lighting going all crazy in this broadcast?

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Speaker 1: That was us are bad, But I have to really

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Speaker 1: thank everyone who works for the Weather Channel and the

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Speaker 1: Weather Company. They were very generous with their time and

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Speaker 1: they gave us lots of leeway to shoot really cool video.

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Speaker 1: So it was a great visit and it helped me

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Speaker 1: appreciate the complexities of meteorology on a deeper level. So

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Speaker 1: let's now talk about weather forecasting. It's an interesting business.

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Speaker 1: At a very very high level, like a super simplistic level.

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Speaker 1: Weather forecasting, at least in the recent past, involved taking

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Speaker 1: lots of observations, comparing those observations of present conditions to

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Speaker 1: things that had happened before in the past, researching what

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Speaker 1: followed those similar conditions when they did happen before, and

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Speaker 1: then making a guess as to what is going to

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Speaker 1: happen next based upon past experience. That's a drastic oversimplification,

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Speaker 1: and really it's saying that it's about pattern recognition, and like,

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Speaker 1: let's say, if you notice that when the temperature goes

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Speaker 1: up at a certain time of day, with these other

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Speaker 1: factors in place, the chance of rain increases drastically based

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Speaker 1: upon past experience. You might use that to help forecast

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Speaker 1: the weather and say there's a good chance that's going

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Speaker 1: to rain later today because these other factors are at play,

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Speaker 1: and other times when that has happened, it's rained. But

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Speaker 1: let me give you a more simple example about how

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Speaker 1: this might work out. Let's say you've got some basic

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Speaker 1: meteorological gear, like some sensors, a barometer, wind speed, indicator,

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Speaker 1: wind direction. You know how much humidity is in the air.

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Speaker 1: You know the temperature because you've got a thermometer, all

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Speaker 1: these sort of things. These are the typical sensors you

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Speaker 1: would find at a weather observation point. You've kept a

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Speaker 1: log book of weather for this particular location that goes

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Speaker 1: back two decades, so you've got twenty years of information

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Speaker 1: at your disposal, twenty years of collections of data points

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Speaker 1: and what was actually happening with the weather. You make

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Speaker 1: your observation in the morning, you note the temperature, the

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Speaker 1: air pressure, You've got all these different factors, and then

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Speaker 1: you look at your log books and you look for

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Speaker 1: days that are similar to the conditions you are currently observing.

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Speaker 1: Then you look to see what happened later on those

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Speaker 1: previous days. So if you had one hundred mornings that

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Speaker 1: are similar to the conditions of the morning you are

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Speaker 1: concerned with, like this morning, you wake up, this morning,

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Speaker 1: you take readings, you find one other, one other examples

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Speaker 1: in your log book that are similar to today, and

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Speaker 1: then you notice that on seventy of those one days

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Speaker 1: it rained. You could say there's a seventy chance of rain.

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Speaker 1: That seventy of the time, when conditions were the way

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Speaker 1: they are right now, it rained. Of those days where

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Speaker 1: the conditions were exactly the way they are right now,

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Speaker 1: it did not rain. And I don't really mean exactly.

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Speaker 1: I guess I should say approximately, because weather is incredibly

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Speaker 1: complicated and to have two weather systems behave exactly the

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Speaker 1: same way under the same circumstances is pretty unlikely. But this,

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Speaker 1: again is a drastic oversimplification of how weather forecasts work.

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Speaker 1: It does give you a basic idea of the the

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Speaker 1: principle behind meteorological forecasts, at least until more recently we

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Speaker 1: get into weather simulation and huge amounts of data processing.

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Speaker 1: Today that gets a lot more sophisticated than just what

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Speaker 1: are the conditions today and what happened on previous occasions

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Speaker 1: when those conditions were present. But keep in mind meteorology

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Speaker 1: is constantly evolving. It has ever reached a perfect level status,

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Speaker 1: as anyone who has depended upon a weather forecast knows,

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Speaker 1: you've probably in the past looked at a weather forecast

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Speaker 1: and said, oh, there's no chance of rain, and then

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Speaker 1: a thunderstorm pops up. Well, that's because weather is really

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Speaker 1: complicated and sometimes a hyper local event can occur that

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Speaker 1: is impossible to really predict when you're looking at, say

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Speaker 1: a regional weather forecast, because your fidelity doesn't get that small.

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Speaker 1: You can't predict everything that happens within that region with

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Speaker 1: perfect accuracy. You're giving more of an overall look for

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Speaker 1: the region as a whole. So it gets really complex.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of different variables, and there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of different technology that goes into gathering the information

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Speaker 1: about those variables and then crunching those numbers to make

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Speaker 1: some meaning out of it, which is why it's an

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Speaker 1: ideal topic or text stuff. Now, if we are to

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Speaker 1: understand really how meteorology works, we've we've got to take

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Speaker 1: a deep looking at a look at whether or not

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Speaker 1: a deep looking that makes no sense, but a deep

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Speaker 1: look at whether. We at least need to get as

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Speaker 1: deep in understanding for whether as we can in a

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Speaker 1: casual podcast setting. So the first step is acknowledging the

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Speaker 1: difference between weather and climate. This is important because I

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Speaker 1: see these two concepts conflated all the time, and frequently

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Speaker 1: it pops up in in political discussions because you have

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Speaker 1: people with agendas who want to push specific action items

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Speaker 1: that favor their philosophy over the action items of people

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Speaker 1: who oppose their philosophy. And frequently in those discussions, people

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Speaker 1: will start to make generalizations about weather and climate that are,

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Speaker 1: if not untrue, at least inaccurate. So let's settle that.

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Speaker 1: And I know all of you know this, but it's

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Speaker 1: good to at least start with the baseline. So whether

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Speaker 1: refers to the current state of the atmosphere, it's it's timely.

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Speaker 1: It's either something that's happening right now, like you're talking

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Speaker 1: about the weather right now, you're talking about a weather forecast.

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Speaker 1: You're talking about something that's going to happen within the

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Speaker 1: next day to ten days maybe or maybe a little

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Speaker 1: further out, but that's about it. Or you're talking about

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Speaker 1: what has happened over the past few days, but that's

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Speaker 1: about it. Like it's about a month or so of

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Speaker 1: time stretching backward and forward uh in total from where

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Speaker 1: you are right now, So it's very timely. Climate, however,

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Speaker 1: is about whether patterns over vast spans of time or

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Speaker 1: at least several years, if not decades of time. So

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Speaker 1: climate is more about general weather patterns and how they

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Speaker 1: behave over these these uh the span of years. So

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Speaker 1: climate change is very gradual. That means that you're not

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Speaker 1: likely to notice climate change on a day to day basis,

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Speaker 1: which means that if you use an argument like global

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Speaker 1: warming isn't real because it's snowed last winter, that's a

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Speaker 1: fallacious argument because you're talking there about whether not climate

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Speaker 1: climate would be a gradual change, which over the course

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Speaker 1: of several years might mean that after several years it's

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Speaker 1: snowing less and less, or the snow is not lasting

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Speaker 1: very long, the the period of time where it does

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Speaker 1: snow is decreasing, like it's becoming more concentrated in a

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Speaker 1: narrower span of days. Those are the sort of things

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Speaker 1: we might see as a result of climate change over

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Speaker 1: the course of several years. But we humans aren't very

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Speaker 1: good at conceptualizing that. We tend to focus on stuff

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Speaker 1: that we've recently observed, but particularly when it's something that's

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Speaker 1: happening at at times. So if you were to have

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Speaker 1: an unusually mild summer, you might think, well, that says

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Speaker 1: that climate change is is bogus because I should it

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Speaker 1: should be much hotter than that. That's not taking into

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Speaker 1: account the long term changes in trends. So again, climate

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Speaker 1: is the long view, whether is what is happening right now?

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Speaker 1: Now that we've established that, we can get past those

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Speaker 1: weird straw man arguments people make that tried to discredit

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Speaker 1: one another for whatever philosophy they have using weather in

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Speaker 1: place of climate, it just doesn't work. Climate change, by

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Speaker 1: the way, is a real thing. Uh, it is a

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Speaker 1: scientific consensus has found that climate change is real and

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Speaker 1: that humans have had an impact, a significant impact on

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Speaker 1: climate change. And consensus is no small matter getting scientists

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Speaker 1: to agree to some thing. That's I mean, science is

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Speaker 1: all about questioning claims and putting them to the test.

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Speaker 1: That's how science works is you make an observation or

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Speaker 1: you make a prediction, and then you test it over

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Speaker 1: and over and over again to see if it holds true.

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Speaker 1: If you get to a scientific consensus where a lot

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Speaker 1: of scientists, the vast majority of them all agree on something,

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Speaker 1: that's a powerful statement, although we often will see that dismissed.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, again, this isn't to get political. This is

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Speaker 1: just stating a scientific fact, not a political effect. Climate

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Speaker 1: change is real, humans have an impact on it. What

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Speaker 1: does that mean politically, Well, that's a totally different discussion.

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Speaker 1: So there's probably people out there who wish that climate

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Speaker 1: change wasn't a real thing, that this was all just

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Speaker 1: a manufactured story. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

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Speaker 1: As my old social studies teacher would say, So, climate

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Speaker 1: describes weather trends over many, many years, and weather describes

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Speaker 1: changing atmospheric conditions on a much shorter time span. And

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Speaker 1: our atmosphere is where weather happens. Again, not a big shock.

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Speaker 1: This is elementary school science. It's made up of a

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Speaker 1: lot of gases our atmosphere. The big one, of course,

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Speaker 1: is nitrogen, that makes up about of the atmosphere. Then

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Speaker 1: comes oxygen, which is my personal favorite. I'm totally breathless

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Speaker 1: without oxygen. It makes up about of the art's atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: and then you've got less than a percent of argone

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Speaker 1: point zero three carbon dioxide, and the rest of it

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Speaker 1: is made up of small amounts of water, vapor, hydrogen, ozone, neon, helium, crypton,

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Speaker 1: and xenon. Our atmosphere is pretty thick, and there's not

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Speaker 1: really a hard barrier between the top of the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: in the beginning of space. It's kind of a fuzzy barrier,

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Speaker 1: and there's not like you can't point to a specific

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Speaker 1: height above the Earth and say, specifically, at this point

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere ends, and this is just empty space beyond it.

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Speaker 1: The best you can do is do an estimation. So

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, the atmosphere pretty much peters out into nothing

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Speaker 1: once you reach about six hundred miles or one thousand

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Speaker 1: kilometers above sea level, So you gotta go at sea

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Speaker 1: level six d miles up and you're pretty much at

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Speaker 1: the point where you're not going to find any molecules

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Speaker 1: of any significant number that represent an atmosphere. Gravity holds

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Speaker 1: the gases down to the planet, which I'm sure seems

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Speaker 1: pretty obvious. Without gravity, the atmosphere would dissipate into space,

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Speaker 1: but don't worry, so would we. So the gases wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be lonely for very long. It's a moot point because

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Speaker 1: we do have gravity, so we're good. The atmosphere is

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Speaker 1: also a very heavy thing. Collectively, if you take all

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Speaker 1: of the other's atmosphere, it weighs five point five quadrillion uns.

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Speaker 1: That's four point nine nine quadrillion metric tons. Again, that's collective.

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Speaker 1: That's all the atmosphere that surrounds our planet. Obviously, you

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Speaker 1: are not walking around with a few quadrillion tons of

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Speaker 1: weight on top of you. This weight of the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: creates atmospheric pressure. The pressure is different at various altitudes,

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Speaker 1: which makes sense. If you are on top of a mountain,

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Speaker 1: you actually have less atmosphere above you, like there's less

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Speaker 1: air between you and outer space. If you're on top

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Speaker 1: of a mountain, then if you were standing in the

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Speaker 1: middle of a valley, there would be more air between

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Speaker 1: you and outer space. Because again remember we're measuring that

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Speaker 1: by sea level, so your altitude makes a big difference.

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Speaker 1: You would have a lower atmospheric pressure at a high

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Speaker 1: altitude than you would somewhere with a low altitude. The

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Speaker 1: pressure also compresses the gases in the atmosphere, so air

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Speaker 1: closer to the surface of the planet is more dense

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Speaker 1: than air that's near the edges of space, and all

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Speaker 1: the weight above that low altitude air is forcing the

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Speaker 1: various molecules to get all chummy with each other. So

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Speaker 1: you've got denser air closer to the surface. So I've

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Speaker 1: got more to say about atmospheric pressure and it's rolling

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Speaker 1: weather in just a minute. But before I jump into that,

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Speaker 1: let me take a breath and thank our sponsor. All right,

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Speaker 1: So let's say you are at sea level. The average

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Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure at sea level is fourteen point seven pounds

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Speaker 1: or six point seven kilograms per square inch. As you

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Speaker 1: climb in altitude, the pressure and density of the air

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Speaker 1: around you decreases until you reach a point where it

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Speaker 1: would be quite difficult to breathe, and you need to

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Speaker 1: breathe in more in order to get enough oxygen so

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Speaker 1: that you can continue, you know, living. So you might

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Speaker 1: take a lungfull and not get enough oxygen to remain

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Speaker 1: conscious if you're at a high enough altitude, which is

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Speaker 1: part of the reason why mountain climbers have to tackle

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Speaker 1: really tall mountains and stages. They have to have camps

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Speaker 1: where they take a break and acclimate to the lower

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Speaker 1: air pressure and lower air density of higher altitudes. So

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Speaker 1: gravity obviously plays a big part in weather systems keeping

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Speaker 1: our atmosphere nice and in place. The Sun obviously also

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Speaker 1: contributes to our weather patterns. The Sun is the direct

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Speaker 1: source for most of the energy here on Earth. Some

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Speaker 1: of the energy of the Sun gives off warms our

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Speaker 1: atmosphere directly, but most atmospheric warming actually comes not from

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Speaker 1: sunlight coming down to Earth, but rather the heat that

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Speaker 1: is radiated off of Earth. The heat that the Earth

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Speaker 1: has absorbed from the Sun. So the plant itself absorbs

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Speaker 1: heat and then releases that heat later on. That tends

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Speaker 1: to be what heats up most of the atmosphere. The

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Speaker 1: reason this happens is because the type of radiation that

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Speaker 1: we're talking about radiation from the Sun is short wave

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Speaker 1: radiation that easily passes through the gases the atmosphere and

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Speaker 1: then it gets absorbed by the planet. When the planet

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Speaker 1: emits heat, it's emitting long wave radiation. Long wave radiation

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Speaker 1: gets absorbed readily by the atmosphere, so the atmosphere warms

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Speaker 1: from the ground up. And that also explains why if

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Speaker 1: you were to climb a mountain as you would climb

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Speaker 1: in elevation, the temperature would decrease to a point anyway

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Speaker 1: in the troposphere. So there are four layers of Earth's atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: and you classify those four layers by temperature ranges. The

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Speaker 1: layers aren't uniform. Their thickness varies a bit as you

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Speaker 1: go from region to region around the Earth, but they're

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Speaker 1: roughly outer shells of Earth. The innermost one is the atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: as the level closest to the surface of the Earth.

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Speaker 1: It ends somewhere around seven miles or eleven kilometers above

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Speaker 1: sea level on average. Throughout the troposphere, as you climb altitudes,

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Speaker 1: the temperature drops. That's one of the markers for the

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Speaker 1: troposphere that all stops when you pass the tropo pause.

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Speaker 1: That is the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere.

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Speaker 1: That is the next layer out from the troposphere. The

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Speaker 1: tropospheres where all of Earth's weather happens. It also accounts

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Speaker 1: for eighty percent of the air in our atmosphere. The

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Speaker 1: other three layers contain the remaining twenty of the air

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Speaker 1: in our atmosphere. Now, remember our atmosphere extends all the

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Speaker 1: way up to six hundred miles above sea level, whereas

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Speaker 1: the troposphere ends at seven miles above sea level. So

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Speaker 1: within those first seven miles out of six hundred, you

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Speaker 1: have eighty percent of the air in our atmosphere. That

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Speaker 1: tells you how densely packed those gases are. The stratosphere

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Speaker 1: extends from the tropopause up to about thirty miles above

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Speaker 1: sea level or forty eight kilometers. For the first few miles,

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Speaker 1: the temperature of the stratosphere remains pretty stable with regards

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Speaker 1: to the tropopause below. So remember you climb up through

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Speaker 1: the troposphere, the temperature starts to go down. When you

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Speaker 1: hit the tropopause, the temperature pretty much stabilizes, and then

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Speaker 1: you're in the stratosphere and the temperature remains stable for

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Speaker 1: the first several miles, but then the temperatures actually start

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Speaker 1: to increase. It starts to get warmer as you move

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Speaker 1: through the stratosphere. This is because at those upper levels

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Speaker 1: of the stratosphere you can find ozone. Ozone can absorb

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Speaker 1: ultra violet radiation from the Sun. Unlike most of the

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Speaker 1: other gases, it actually can absorb some of those short

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Speaker 1: wave radiations. So the ozone heats up, which means the

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Speaker 1: upper levels of the stratosphere are also warmer than the

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Speaker 1: lower levels. Above the amosphere is the miso sphere, where

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Speaker 1: temperatures decline again, getting to be the coldest temperatures in

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Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere. Those temperatures hovered around minus degrees fahrenheit or

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Speaker 1: minus nineties celsius. And the final layer of the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: is the thermosphere, which shares its outer body with space,

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Speaker 1: and the air here is not dense at all. It's

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Speaker 1: actually pretty widely spread out. The molecules are very thin like,

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Speaker 1: it's very thinly populated, the opposite of very dense. In

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Speaker 1: other words, the interesting thing here is that the thermosphere

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Speaker 1: technically gets really freaking hot. We're talking like degrees fahrenheit

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Speaker 1: or shundred degrees celsius. But because those molecules are so

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Speaker 1: few and far between, it would not feel hot to

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Speaker 1: you because you wouldn't be in contact with these highly

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Speaker 1: energized molecules. They're spread too far apart from each other.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like being inside and an enormous arena

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Speaker 1: stadium and there are a dozen ping pong balls flying around.

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Speaker 1: The Odds of any of those ping pong balls actually

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Speaker 1: making contact with you are pretty low. Because you're in

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Speaker 1: a big area with these tiny things moving around, it's

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Speaker 1: just not likely that you're gonna encounter one of them.

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Speaker 1: Same thing is kind of true with molecules out in

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Speaker 1: uh the the thermosphere. So while those molecules will be

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Speaker 1: quite warm and you're not likely to run into them.

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Speaker 1: Now back here on the surface, where we have the

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Speaker 1: troposphere to deal with, you've got atmospheric pressure, you've got temperature.

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Speaker 1: These two factors affect atmospheric movement. As gases heat up,

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Speaker 1: the molecules in those gases move around more, they spread out,

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Speaker 1: they become less dense. When the density changes enough so

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Speaker 1: that the air above is more dense than the air below,

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Speaker 1: that denser air is going to sink down and displace

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Speaker 1: the warm air that is there. You might have heard

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Speaker 1: the phrase warm air rises, Well, it's true, but it's

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Speaker 1: really probably more accurate to say cold air sinks. If

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Speaker 1: you were to have a very dense fluid and you

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Speaker 1: put it on top of a less dense fluid, you'd

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Speaker 1: see the dense fluids sink down to the bottom and

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Speaker 1: the less dense fluid would rise to the top. Same

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Speaker 1: thing is true with atmospheres and our atmosphere is a fluid,

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Speaker 1: so these denser, colder areas sink down and that pushes

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Speaker 1: the warm air up to the top. So this way

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Speaker 1: you get some fluid movement in our atmosphere as different

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Speaker 1: areas start to warm up or cool down. Now, as

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Speaker 1: that warm air does rise, it actually starts to cool

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Speaker 1: down because it's going up in altitude. And remember and

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Speaker 1: those altitudes in the troposphere. The higher you go, the

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Speaker 1: cooler it gets. So the warm air initially gets pushed

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Speaker 1: up by colder air, but then the warm hair itself

431
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: begins to cool and it has a tendency to sink again. Now,

432
00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: if everything we're equal, if our planet did not rotate,

433
00:28:00,520 --> 00:28:07,159
Speaker 1: if we didn't have any uh variation in parts of

434
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: the plant that warmed or cooled, if it all warmed

435
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:12,680
Speaker 1: or cooled at the same time, our atmosphere behavior would

436
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:17,360
Speaker 1: be really simple. It would expand when sun was hitting it,

437
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 1: and it would contract when the sun wasn't hitting it.

438
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 1: So you would just see the atmosphere kind of breathe

439
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: that would move out and in based upon the warming

440
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:28,400
Speaker 1: and cooling, and that's all it would do. You wouldn't

441
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of other movement there, but that's

442
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: not our reality. The reality is we have a lot

443
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: of other factors at play that create the the conditions

444
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: that allow wind to generate. So regions of the Earth

445
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: warm at different rates at different speeds, and thus regions

446
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 1: of our atmosphere end up warming at those different speeds,

447
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 1: and that regional variation causes a lot of churning in

448
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, which creates pressure differentials between regions, thus leading

449
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: to wind. So let's take a city and countryside example

450
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 1: to kind of understand what I mean by this. If

451
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: you have a city, the city heats up faster than

452
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: the countryside would during the day due to a lot

453
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: of the materials in the city, you know, concrete, blacktop,

454
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 1: these sort of materials soak up a lot of heat,

455
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: so they're going to get much warmer than the countryside wood,

456
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: which doesn't have those sort of materials all through it.

457
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 1: So you've probably heard of the island effect, which is

458
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: where you get an island of heat because you've got

459
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: a bunch of of mass that just absorbs heat readily

460
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: in one space, and it creates an island effect within

461
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: the region. That's what we're talking about here. The city

462
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 1: ends up soaking up a lot of heat and then

463
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:47,120
Speaker 1: releases that heat. Over the course of many hours. As

464
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: cities radiate heat, that heat warms the atmosphere that's surrounding

465
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: the city's That warm air is less dense than the

466
00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: cold air that's further on the outskirts of the city,

467
00:29:57,000 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: out in the countryside, So the warm air is an

468
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 1: area of low pressure because it's less dense. It's actually

469
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: exerting less pressure on the city because it weighs less.

470
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: It is less dense than the cold air that's around it,

471
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: or the relatively cold air compared to the city's air.

472
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: So the cold air blows into the city because it

473
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: wants to move from an area of high pressure to

474
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: an area of low pressure, sort of that. In tropic movement,

475
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:28,959
Speaker 1: the warm air is forced upwards in an updraft and

476
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 1: starts to climb up into the upper levels of the troposphere.

477
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: As it does so, it starts to cool, and once

478
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: it cools enough, it needs to come back down. But

479
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 1: because cities soak up so much heat, and because the

480
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: updraft can be so powerful, the cold air can't just

481
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: sink back down to where it was. It actually has

482
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 1: to move outward and then sink down further out from

483
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: where the city is. It's almost like a fountain. You

484
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: would see the water of the fountain come up in

485
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: a column and then spread out in a fan the

486
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: top and come back down to the base of the fountain.

487
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: That's sort of what's happening, except with atmosphere, not with water,

488
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 1: although it could be with water. We'll get into rain

489
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: in just a second. So at night the city would

490
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: cool faster than the countryside does, and then the trend

491
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 1: would reverse itself. We would have winds that are originating

492
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: essentially from the city moving out to the countryside. This

493
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 1: little system is what we would call a convection cell,

494
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: and convection is when the movement of mass or circulation

495
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: of atmosphere transfers heat through some sort of substance. In

496
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 1: this case, we're talking about the planet and the atmosphere.

497
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: On a larger scale, forces affect these movements to generate

498
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: massive weather weather patterns. The poles are areas of high

499
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: pressure and the equator is an area of low pressure.

500
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: You've got a lot warmer air moist air in the equator,

501
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:54,479
Speaker 1: a lot cold or dry air over at the poles.

502
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 1: And if that was all there were to it, we

503
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 1: would see winds coming from the north and south and

504
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: converging towards the equator. But there are a lot of

505
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: other areas of high and low pressure across the surface

506
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: of the Earth. It's not just the polls and the equator.

507
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 1: There's a lot of variation there due to tons of

508
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: different stuff, including topography like mountains and valleys, that sort

509
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 1: of thing, deserts. So you have lots of areas of

510
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: high and low pressure across the surface of the Earth,

511
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:26,160
Speaker 1: which creates natural pressure gradients, and that generates wind. Wind

512
00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 1: from high pressure areas cycle inward to low pressure areas.

513
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: In fact, we call a low pressure center a cyclone.

514
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 1: Now it's not the same thing as cyclones that are

515
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: also known as hurricanes, slightly different, although there is a

516
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: circular motion to it. That's where you get that cyclone

517
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: name there. High pressure centers are anti cyclones, as an

518
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: anti not as an anti cyclone the sister of my father,

519
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 1: who we don't talk about. It's a different thing entirely.

520
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 1: High pressure air moves in a down undraft as low

521
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 1: pressure air moves in an updraft, and Earth's rotation also

522
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 1: gets into the game. This is where we get the

523
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:10,480
Speaker 1: Coriolis effect. In the northern hemisphere, wind deflects towards the right.

524
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: In the southern hemisphere it's deflected to the left. The

525
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: Coriolis effect really influences large fluid masses, by the way,

526
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 1: so it does not necessarily affect which way the water

527
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 1: goes down a sink or a toilet, despite what the

528
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 1: Simpsons would have you believe. Uh, there are a lot

529
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: of other smaller things that can affect the way water

530
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:35,000
Speaker 1: drains down the drain and is not the Coriolis effect.

531
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: Coriolis effect is really for very big systems, not for

532
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: small systems like a a sink full of water or

533
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: a tub full of water. But the Coriolis effect does

534
00:33:47,280 --> 00:33:50,959
Speaker 1: break the two big convection cells that otherwise would exist,

535
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: you know, the ones that would be the North and

536
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: South hemispheres, and it ends up creating three different types

537
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: of convection cells. You get two of each type. You

538
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: have two polar cells to Hadley cells, and two Feral cells.

539
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 1: And the Hadley and Feral cells are named after meteorologists

540
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: who discovered them. This is the important thing, really is

541
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 1: to remember that these convection cells have a really big

542
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 1: impact on on larger weather trends, global weather trends now

543
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: where the wind blows down here near the surface, air

544
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:26,879
Speaker 1: encounters resistance in the form of friction, but a bit

545
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,440
Speaker 1: higher up in the atmosphere that's not a problem. So

546
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: jet streams shoot around at fairly high altitudes we're talking

547
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: twenty thoty five thou feet or between six and fourteen kilometers,

548
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:42,320
Speaker 1: and they don't encounter this friction. They move it incredible speeds.

549
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: They can carry temperature changes effectively around the world. So

550
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 1: you'll see things about jet stream and how that will

551
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: affect local weather patterns depending upon where you live. High

552
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: altitude winds, the coreolas, affected pressure gradients are the three

553
00:34:56,120 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 1: big influencers of wind generation on a global scale. But

554
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:05,360
Speaker 1: remember regional geography, coastlines, mountains, valleys, all of that also

555
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 1: has an effect. Regional heating and cooling has an effect.

556
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: So these big factors are the major variables, but they're

557
00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: not the only ones. And now you're starting to see

558
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: all the complications that come into just describing weather, let

559
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: alone predicting it. But that covers wind. Rain is pretty

560
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,280
Speaker 1: easy to explain. The water cycle on Earth is pretty

561
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:34,439
Speaker 1: much a closed system. Water evaporates into the atmosphere. Water

562
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 1: vapor condenses as it cools down, so it condenses from

563
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 1: water vapor and turns into liquid water. It starts to

564
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: cling to specs of stuff in the atmosphere, little particles

565
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: of dust. Uh. That ends up becoming the nucleic sites

566
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: for rain drops. If it is able to accumulate enough

567
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 1: water vapor. The cooling happens. Once water vapor rises high

568
00:35:55,640 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: enough into the air, and with enough cooling water vapor,

569
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: you get clouds. Wind will push and reshape the clouds,

570
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 1: moving them to different locations. And if you get enough

571
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: water vapor condensing around those nucleic sites, it becomes too

572
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:13,920
Speaker 1: heavy to remain aloft by the winds alone, and it

573
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,840
Speaker 1: starts to fall. And that's when you get rain, or

574
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:20,400
Speaker 1: if it's really cold, you might get sleet or freezing

575
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:22,759
Speaker 1: rain or snow. But you get what I mean, you

576
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:26,240
Speaker 1: get precipitation. I've got a little bit more to say

577
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: about the water cycle and other elements of weather, but

578
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 1: before I jump into that, let's take another quick break

579
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:44,360
Speaker 1: and thank our sponsor. So water vapor can be pushed

580
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:48,320
Speaker 1: into higher altitudes through several different ways. One of those

581
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:52,359
Speaker 1: is just changes in elevation in the land. So if

582
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 1: you have a warm air system and it's got a

583
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: lot of water vapor in it, and it moves across

584
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 1: flat lands and start to encounter mountains, it has to

585
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 1: conform with the topography, so as it gets pushed against

586
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: the mountain, it actually starts to go up the mountain,

587
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:13,240
Speaker 1: and that means some of that water vapor gets pushed

588
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: up to higher elevations and it gets high enough, then

589
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 1: it can cool down, condense, turn into clouds, and eventually

590
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 1: even turn into precipitation. So if you've ever heard about

591
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:28,240
Speaker 1: windward and leeward that's what this refers to. The windward

592
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: side of a mountain is the side that faces the

593
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:36,200
Speaker 1: area where wind comes in from. So traditionally the direction

594
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 1: front which fronts move through, so you have a warm

595
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: air mass coming through to a hit a mountain, that's

596
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: the windward side. The leeward side tends to be gloomy

597
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: and covered in rain a lot because that water vapor

598
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 1: that hits the windward side gets forced upwards into the

599
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 1: higher parts of the atmosphere or of the troposphere i

600
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: should say, condenses into uh into clouds, and then eventually

601
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: can turn into rain or precipitation of other forms, and

602
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:06,839
Speaker 1: on the leeward side that's where you get that rain,

603
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 1: and you also have a lot of cloud cover. So

604
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: there's a sunny side of a mountain and there's the

605
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: less sunny side of the mountain. Typically, and uh, that's

606
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 1: one way water vapora can be pushed into high altitudes

607
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: to form clouds. But there's also an way called frontal wedging,

608
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: which originally I thought was something that happened to me

609
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:27,719
Speaker 1: back in middle school, but it turns out I was

610
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 1: thinking of something totally different. This is actually when warm

611
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 1: air ends up colliding with a cold air mass, and

612
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:37,279
Speaker 1: the cold air mass sort sort of acts like a

613
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: ramp because remember a cold air is more dense than

614
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 1: warm air, so warm air is going to float above

615
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 1: or rise over cold air. It ends up being wedged

616
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 1: on top of cold air. That pushes warm water vapor

617
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: up into those higher altitudes again where it can condense

618
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: and form clouds. So if you have a warm air

619
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 1: mass moving into to a cold front, or rather a

620
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:06,319
Speaker 1: cold air mass, not a cold front, then this can happen.

621
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 1: The warm air will rise over the cold air, the

622
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 1: water vapor in the warm air will slowly condense and

623
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: then you end up getting clouds as a result. This

624
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,160
Speaker 1: is typically what we call a front. So a warm

625
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: front is when warm air moves into an area that

626
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:22,839
Speaker 1: has cold air in it. A cold front is when

627
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: cold air moves into an area that has warm air

628
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:28,839
Speaker 1: into it. So essentially it's a low pressure system moving

629
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: into a high pressure system, or a high pressure system

630
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: moving into a low pressure system. And then you've got

631
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 1: these masses colliding with one another. Really, it just depends

632
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 1: on what type of air mass is moving in and

633
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: what type of air mass is currently in the region.

634
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 1: That determines whether it's a cold front or a warm front.

635
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: But then you also have two other types of fronts.

636
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: You have a stationary front, and these cases you have

637
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: two air masses that are unable to advance against each other.

638
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:59,319
Speaker 1: They kind of just bump up against each other and

639
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: stay there. And then you have the occluded front. This

640
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: is when a cold front moves fast enough to overtake

641
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:09,439
Speaker 1: a moving warm front. So that's another way that water

642
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: vapor can be pushed up into the higher elevations. Way

643
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: number three for water vapor to go moved moving up

644
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 1: to those higher altitudes is called convergence. Now this is

645
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: not the same type of convergence I typically like to

646
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 1: talk about here on tech stuff. It's when two similar

647
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 1: air masses collide and both end up forcing air into

648
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: an updraft, which includes water vapor. And so yet again

649
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,479
Speaker 1: we see water vapor get pushed up and cooling down

650
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 1: to condense. But that's convergence. And finally you have what

651
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 1: is called convective lifting. This is a localized effect, so

652
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:48,280
Speaker 1: it's not something that happens on regional or global scales,

653
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: but rather very local scales. It's when Earth's radiation of

654
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:54,760
Speaker 1: heat causes a pocket of air to warm and rise,

655
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: forcing water vapor up in the process and creating clouds.

656
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:01,640
Speaker 1: This requires having an area that is absorbing a lot

657
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: more heat than its surroundings typically do. So a good

658
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: example might be a large airport. The airport's got a

659
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 1: lot of surface area that gets exposure to the sun.

660
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:13,080
Speaker 1: It absorbs a lot of heat, much more heat than

661
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: the surrounding area typically does, and so it releases more

662
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: heat and as a result, you can get cloud formation

663
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: above airports just because of this localized convective lifting. So

664
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: now we understand the general principles behind weather that air

665
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: pressure temperature and the presence of water vapor matter a lot.

666
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: Now other things matter too, of course. The Earth's access,

667
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:37,920
Speaker 1: for example, is that twenty three and a half degrees tilt,

668
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: which means we're likely, uh, we're we're we're like, we're bobbling,

669
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,200
Speaker 1: bobbling around like a wobbly top as we orbit the Sun,

670
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:47,720
Speaker 1: and this causes different parts of the planet to receive

671
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 1: more or less sun exposure during certain parts of the year.

672
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:54,840
Speaker 1: That ends up affecting weather patterns and seasonal patterns and weather.

673
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: It's complicated in that incoming systems can have a dramatic

674
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: effect on systems that are already within a region. So

675
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: it's an enormous, chaotic mess with lots of variables, and

676
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:09,320
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason why meteorology is so darned challenging.

677
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 1: We cannot isolate those variables. We cannot really understand how

678
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: to properly weight all of them in every situation. That is,

679
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: determining which variables are most important under any given set

680
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:26,120
Speaker 1: of circumstances, it's really really hard to do. So you

681
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: might say that under a certain set of conditions, the

682
00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: temperature of the air is the most important variable, and

683
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:37,239
Speaker 1: that depending upon that temperature of the air, certain outcomes

684
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 1: are almost absolutely gonna happen, right But then you might say,

685
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 1: under slightly different circumstances, temperature no longer becomes the most

686
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:49,800
Speaker 1: important variable. Now it's air pressure that's more important than temperature.

687
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:53,720
Speaker 1: Weather is so complicated, and there's so many different variables

688
00:42:53,719 --> 00:42:57,759
Speaker 1: that have different weights and different situations that it becomes very,

689
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: very difficult to understand what is happening right now, let

690
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 1: alone predicting what is going to happen. In fact, I

691
00:43:04,280 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 1: find it amazing that we can manage to have any

692
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: real accuracy and weather predictions at all, because it's so

693
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 1: crazy complicated. Now, Before I wrap up, I thought it'd

694
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: be fun to talk about some of the earlier forms

695
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:21,840
Speaker 1: of weather forecasting before you know, sensors and and observing

696
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: stations and computer models came along. The stuff we used

697
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:30,439
Speaker 1: to do before we had all those sophisticated technologies and

698
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:34,120
Speaker 1: really a truly astonishing amount of processing power capable of

699
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 1: handling all those points of data simultaneously. Because we humans

700
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:40,919
Speaker 1: have been trying to suss out weather for centuries, knowing

701
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 1: what the weather will be like has a tremendous impact

702
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: on our decisions like should I buy tickets to that

703
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 1: outdoor sporting event, or how can I plot a course

704
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: for these shipping goods to get from point A to

705
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: point B with the least amount of delay and fuel consumption.

706
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 1: But our methods for making predictions haven't always been terribly scientific,

707
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 1: and it's heart a lot of our weather predictions were

708
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: centered on pattern recognition. That's what I alluded to at

709
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: the top of this episode. We would say, hey, remember

710
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 1: that other day that was a lot like today. Well,

711
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:13,040
Speaker 1: it rained like a son of a gun later on

712
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:16,400
Speaker 1: the evening, and that other day, I bet that happens

713
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 1: again tonight. I bet we get more rain tonight, because

714
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:23,439
Speaker 1: that's what happened that other day. Early human civilizations made

715
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:27,359
Speaker 1: similar observations and predictions, which range from the immediate, which

716
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: would involve something like I better seek shelter because it

717
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:33,280
Speaker 1: looks like it's going to storm, to more long term planning,

718
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: such as I've noticed that the weather seems to get

719
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 1: warmer for a while, and then everything is growing, and

720
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: then after a while the weather starts getting cold and

721
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 1: everything stops growing. So maybe I should grow stuff in

722
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 1: this one part of time and harvest stuff at this

723
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 1: other part of time. In other words, we started learning

724
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:54,880
Speaker 1: more about how seasons work. There are some changes in

725
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: conditions that are a bit too subtle for humans to

726
00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:00,359
Speaker 1: pick up on them by themselves, but they're are other

727
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 1: animals that are more sensitive to those changes, things like

728
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure, for example, and so humans would sometimes observe

729
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:11,040
Speaker 1: changes in animal behavior that would precede certain types of

730
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: weather events. Those behaviors would become associated with weather, leading

731
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:18,040
Speaker 1: to some folk knowledge about what it means when your cow,

732
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: I don't know, switches from Xbox to PlayStation. I guess

733
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:25,759
Speaker 1: I should point out right now that I haven't been

734
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: on a farm in like thirty years, so my understanding

735
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,040
Speaker 1: of animal behavior might be a little off. But those

736
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: approaches don't really give you very much detail, nor are

737
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: they useful outside of the immediate area. If you see

738
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: your cows are playing Halo two instead of Uncharted, it

739
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:43,840
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you about the weather that's going on in

740
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 1: the town on the other side of the valley, for example.

741
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: And let's say that you want to go to the

742
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: other side of the valley because you need to sell

743
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,879
Speaker 1: your I don't know yearly parsnip harvest, So for that

744
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: you would need more information. You would need someone on

745
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: the other side of the valley sending you observations of

746
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: their weather phenomena, and also a way of understanding what

747
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 1: those observations mean in relation to that area's local weather.

748
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: You would need a meteorologist and some reliable data gathering sensors,

749
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:15,400
Speaker 1: and in our next episode will explore those worlds and

750
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 1: talk about the complex models scientists have created to describe

751
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 1: and predict our weather and to really get a grip

752
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 1: on how impressive it is and why we need supercomputers

753
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: to run some of these weather models. Will also talk

754
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: about why are there more than one? Why is there

755
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: more than one weather model? Wouldn't one weather model work

756
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: for everywhere? As it turns out new there are a

757
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 1: lot of different weather models, and they all have different

758
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: levels of resolution, meaning some of them have way more

759
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: observing stations reporting in for a localized area, which means

760
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 1: you have very very accurate reports of what is happening

761
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: in a specific region, but they don't cover a large region,

762
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: like a large area might be a section of a country,

763
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: but not an entire country, or certainly not a continent.

764
00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: Then you might have much larger weather models that cover continents,

765
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 1: but they do so at a much lower resolution. You

766
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:17,520
Speaker 1: don't have specific accuracy for independent regions. Ideally, what we

767
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: want to arrive at is a global model that can

768
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: have incredible resolution down to the local level, so that

769
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: we know what the weather is going to be like

770
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: in our hometown, we know what the weather is going

771
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:31,560
Speaker 1: to be like in the place we're going to travel

772
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 1: to on the other side of the world, and we

773
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 1: can even see how the weather conditions in one location

774
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: are affecting the subsequent locations further down the line. That's ideal.

775
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: We are not there yet in our next episode. We'll

776
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:50,239
Speaker 1: talk about why that is. But for now, if you

777
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:53,880
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please

778
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: let me know what those are, because I hate guessing.

779
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 1: You can write me My address is tech stuff at

780
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me

781
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle at both

782
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:07,879
Speaker 1: of those is tech Stuff hs W. If you would

783
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 1: like to watch me record an episode live, go to

784
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv slash tech stuff. You can see the

785
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:17,399
Speaker 1: schedule there and you can join in and watch as

786
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: we have technical difficulties that extend a forty five minute

787
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: long recording session into an hour and a half that

788
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 1: really happened today, and you wouldn't be able to see

789
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 1: it unless you go to Twitch dot tv slash tech

790
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: stuff to enjoy and watch as other people pop into

791
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: the studio and try and fix problems. It's exciting. I

792
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:39,480
Speaker 1: hope to see you there and I'll talk to you

793
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:47,840
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of

794
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: other topics. Because it has staff works dot com