A) Introduction: Why learn about the weather?

Task 1) Singing in the rain? (or another weather-based story of your choice)

Literacy Activity: Tell a story about how the weather has affected you. It could be in a good way or a bad way, a hot sunny day on the beach, a thunder storm, a windy day. You do not even have to be on land, maybe you are on a boat or an aircraft. The story should be about an actual event that you were involved in.

The important thing is that your story describes how the weather affected you and everything around you. What could you see, hear, feel. What was going on around you, what were other people doing

Name: Class:

Extension: Geography in the news:

Choose a story from my Pinterest board or find one of your own and review it in the box below. Make sure you include a description of where in the world it happened and reference

Task 2) Knowledge Check Look at the aims below, there are probably some things that you already know something about. In the current column add a number from 0-5 based on how much you think you know about each aim. 0 is I know nothing, 5 indicates you know a lot.

Aim Current knowledge Now I know it

Give examples of how weather affects our lives

Define ‘weather’

Define ‘climate’

Describe the structure of the earth's atmosphere

Explain how the sun heats the atmosphere

Understand the Greenhouse effect and how life could not exist without it

Be able to describe the impact that humans are having on the Greenhouse Effect

Describe how we measure and record the weather, say what instruments are used to measure them, and give the units of measurement

Read a simple weather map

Describe the main physical features of Europe; name and describe the five climate zones in Europe, and say roughly where in Europe they are

Give examples of how climate affects our lives

Read and draw a climate graph

Task 3: Weather or Climate

a) Based on what you have just learned from this video, have a go at writing a dictionary definition for both Weather and Climate.

b)b)b)b)b)b)b)b)b)b)b)

After watching the second video you may go back and change the definitions you gave in (a)

c) Explain how recording the daily weather helps us to determine the climate of a region?

Extension: What’s the word?

Why do you think so many people get the two terms confused? Do you think it actually matters? Explain your answer.

CLIMATE

WEATHER

B) Our AtmosphereTask 4: The structure of the Atmosphere

a) In what year was Joe Kittinger's world record jump?

b) Why was he jumping?

c) How high did he jump from?

d) What % of the atmosphere did he have below him when he jumped?

e) When he jumped, he could not tell that he was falling until he looked back at the balloon. Why do you think this was?

f) Why did Kittinger need to use three different sized parachutes during his fall?

Review: What have you learned about the structure of the atmosphere based on the two videos you

have watched? Think about the answers you gave to (d) and (e).

Figure 1: Joe Kittinger leaps from his helium balloon at 31,300 m

wikipedia

g) Look at figure 2 below. Which layer of the atmosphere did Joe Kittinger jump from?

h) Create an acronym that will help you remember the layers of the atmosphere in the correct order. Write the acronym in box next to the diagram.

i) Write a short paragraph describing each layer of the atmosphere and its main characteristics. You should mention the altitude at which each layer begins and ends, whether temperature increases or decrease and any other interesting features each layer has.

Figure 2 The Structure of the Atmosphere

STRATOSPHERE

TROPOSPHERE

MESOSPHERE

Task 5) The sun heats the earth and the earth heats the

air.

a) Definitions: Write definitions for the following words.

Radiation:

Conduction:

Convection:

Figure 3: How the sun heats our atmosphere

b) Use the words above and the information from figure 3 to write three clear sentences that explain how the sun heats up our atmosphere.

Figure 1The Earths Energy Budget. Energy arrives from the sun as radiant shortwave energy (yellow) and leaves the planet as Longwave radiation/infrared energy (red). (wikimedia)

c) In what form does energy from the sun reach the earth?

d) Why does not all the energy reach the earth’s surface?

e) 51% of the incoming solar energy is absorbed by the earth, what does this do to the earth.

f) Explain in as much detail as you can why temperatures are cooler on a cloudy summers day. You will need to use information from both of the diagrams in this section.

Task 6) The Greenhouse Effect.

a) Create your own labelled diagram in the space below to explain what the greenhouse effect is. Use the images from the website as inspiration but try not to copy them directly.

b) Name two Greenhouse gases. Give their chemical formula’s if you can.

c) If there were no Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, what would happen to the earth’s climate?

d) Give two things humans are doing that result in more Greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.

e) Explain the meaning of the term, “Enhanced Greenhouse Effect”

f) Draw a labelled diagram in the space below to show how human activity is creating an enhanced greenhouse effect. You should base your diagram on the one you produced in part (c).