UNIT 2-NUMBER 1

Welcome to introduction to meteorology. I'm your instructor, Dave Cottrell. And in this course, we are going to take a
look at atmospheric sciences. Of course weather and weather phenomenon and weather forecasting. It's going to be a
great course. You're going to have the opportunity to view these lectures, covering each chapter of the textbook.

There'll be additional podcast drilling down on some of the more important topics and other course materials that you
can use to learn all about. Well, meteorology, atmospheric sciences, weather, and weather forecasting would first, we're
going to start out with a little bit on the history of meteorology.

The history of meteorology, what we'll start there fairly brief. is the study of the atmosphere and its related
phenomena. It was first discussed. Believe it or not by Aristotle way back in three 40 VC in his book, entitled
meteorological, which summarize. All of the meteorological knowledge to date, which at that time, wasn't a whole lot in
the 17th and 18th century, the development of meteorology was a function of necessity is the mother of invention.

And what was the necessity? Well, traders at that time, trading goods by ship were losing cargoes and vast amounts of
money because of the loss of those cargoes due to the weather. And those wealthy traders wanted some way to figure
out what the weather was going to be like. So their ship captains would know which way to sail.

And so necessity be the mother of invention or the invention was the barometer. The barometer was nothing more than
an instrument that measured atmospheric pressure was a pressure rising or was it falling. And what we knew at the time
was rising pressure meant Fairweather sail in that direction and falling pressure and foul weather sail away.

So the first barometer back in the 17th century helped ship captains save their cargo from bad weather. And the 19th
century observations were being made routinely and there were being transmitted by Telegraph. So somebody let's say
in Spain could transmit the observation of their weather. And I did somebody in England or France, and because we
knew what was happening in different parts of the continent, we had the development of synoptic meteorology.

Synoptic meaning at the same time, people in different parts of a large geographic area knew what was happening with
the meteorology, with the weather at the same time. And that was the advent of Sonata, meteorology. In the 1920s, the
concept of air masses fronts and the mid-latitudes cyclone was formulated by Norwegian meteorologist the Norwegians
were big into weather.

And what they came up with was the concept of the air mass and what separated air masses were fronts. And as air
masses moved along, mid-latitudes cyclones formed and we're going to talk an awful lot about mid-latitudes cyclones in
class and what they mean to our weather, uh, each and every day. After world war two, well, military leaders began to
realize, and they always did, but they really had the sense of how important, whether it was after the D-Day invasion in
which was hampered and delayed by weather.

So the U S military being the most powerful force on the globe, they decided they wanted to know more than more
about the weather than anyone else. And they had some mathematicians and those mathematicians sort of said, Hey,
you know what? We have these. These calculus equations, these very advanced mathematical equations that can
predict what the weather's going to be like in the future.

But these mathematical equations take longer to solve than the time that they predict. So you saw them after the time
has already occurred. It doesn't do a whole lot of good military leaders thought, well, if we could do the computations
faster, we could have an actual weather model that predicted the weather.

So they needed a faster computing machine. The faster computing machine came in the 1950s from IBM with the first
computer UNIVAC. So the very first computer was developed and built for the U S military to solve. Weather models.
That's why you have the smartphones in your hands. Now in the 1960s, the first meteorological satellites were launched
trios one.
I was April 1st, 1960, ushering in a whole new era of synoptic meteorology. So two, you understand the weather. We
have to understand the atmosphere to understand the atmosphere. We have to understand the formation of the planet
for that. We have to understand the formation of the solar system. And for that ultimately the formation of the
universe.

Now, these. Different factors that we'll be discussing on this particular slide had to do with significant scientific theories
that are largely accepted by the vast majority of scientists. They may actually come into conflict with some of the world's
great faiths, but these are scientific theories that are currently.

Accepted by the scientific community. If it conflicts with your particular faith, please understand these are theories. You
will not be necessarily tested on these subjects, but to give you an idea of the general scientifically accepted formation
of the universe and solar system and the universe apparently had its beginning with the big bang that occurred about
13.7 billion years ago.

All of the mass and energy of the universe prior to the big bang was concentrated at a geometric point. And space and a
time. And that was the beginning. And when the expansion began, it was a violent, explosive expansion. And the
universe began to expand outward and continues to do so. At this time, we don't know what initiated the expansion, but
it does continue today and probably will for billions of years.

So a really good question. Will it go on forever and continue to expand? Well, it can span to a certain point and then
begin to contract, or will it expand to a certain point and then just sort of flatten out and become static.

Once the big bang had occurred, all of the elements of the universe were rushing away from one another. Has the
universe expanded very hot and very rapidly after several million? Or maybe even hundreds of millions of years as a
universe began to cool condensation into galaxies and solar systems and suns and planets began.

And those galaxies containing solar systems, suns and planets were interspersed all across the universe. Our galaxy, the
Milky way is a map. The very center of the galaxy, that galactic core. That's not one big gigantic star. That's just where all
the stars are. So tightly packed together. It looks like one big star.

Our sun is a little more than halfway out from the center of the Orion spur one of the spiral arms. That's where you can
find our solar system. What kind of a life does a star? How well a star spends its time, fusing hydrogen atoms into helium
atoms, and that eventually the hydrogen and helium being fused together to make heavier elements such as lithium
beryllium and boron.

Much you get, once you get much higher than carbon, though, they're too heavy. The atom has to be forced together by
just the powerful nuclear forces of the sun. It takes a much more powerful force, the explosion of a supernova, and that
typically happens in larger stars. So what happens in a star? Every chemical.

Element heavier than hydrogen was created and released into space by stars. Stars are massive, massive things. And the
weight of all that mass creates tremendous gravity that gravity creates gravitational friction and heat. So now you have.
Both pressure from gravity and heat and enough pressure and heat forces atoms together.

In this case, it's the atoms of hydrogen. If you take four hydrogen atoms and you force them together, they become
helium. While you can see from the periodic table that the hydrogen atom waves 1.01 atomic units, while the helium
atom. Weighs 4.0 atomic units for hydrogen then should equal 4.04 to make it a helium, but it only equals four.

So what happened to that 0.04, that atomic mass? Well, that is what is converted into energy and as the radiation or the
energy that the sun. So our sunlight, all normal stars is powered by that nuclear fusion. As the sun continues to use up
its hydrogen, it begins to force helium together with some hydrogen to get the lift.
Themes. And as it uses up the helium and the lithium and begins to force things together to become the beryllium. And
again, we can't get much higher than the carbon. When sons explode large sons, the supernova forces, all those other
elements together, creating all the other elements of the universe. The origin of the earth is therefore linked to that, of
the sun and the solar system and the galaxies.

As some star stars die, large stars, they supernova and object that gas and dust and other elements into space that gas
and dust and other elements eventually, as it cools, will condense into new. Suns and solar systems and planets, and
that is known as the solar Nebula theory, the sun and the planets, and condense from clouds of dust gas and enriched
elements that the remnants of long ago exploded stars.

Our sun is thought to have, is theorized to have formed through the solar Nebula theory about 4.6 billion years ago. And
as the sun formed. So to the planets at generally the same time or shortly thereafter, So here is the color Nebula theory
sort of played out graphically. Most scientists believe that our solar system started out as a large Nebula of gas, meaning
some long ago, exploded star, maybe even gas and dust that came from the original, big bang floating through the
universe.

Uh, and as that gas and dust began to clump together, the gravity that the mass of that dust and that does create it.
Gravity of all that clumping together began to four force, more mass and dust together until it clumped together into a
cloud of matter and gas. It began to sort of spin around itself and the spinning motion flattened that cloud of dust and
gas out and at the center where most of the dust and gas was the gravity.

High enough to clump it together into a bigger and bigger object that eventually we can became the sun. And out on the
edge of that day, I ask that dust and gas clump together to form the planets. So as a matter gas and planetesimals
collided in that disc, the larger bodies took shape and they eventually formed the planets.

So what the solar Nebula. Theory tells us is that large clouds of gas and dust condensed into solar systems. And that
process happened essentially at the same time when the sun got big enough and heavy enough that its mass was able to
force the first heat hydrogen into helium. That is when the sun literally turned itself on and began to become the fusion
engine that it is, it began to radiate light and energy away from itself.

At the same time, the planets were forming. The planet building process is a process of accretion. As the solar Nebula
begins to spin and the disc flattens out and the sun with its greater and greater mass. Turns itself on and becomes a
fusion engine, all that Rocky debris, all that other gas and dust is spinning around the solar system center that very
young son, uh, in an orbit around the sun.

Well, as those larger masses with greater gravity begin to pull in smaller masses, uh, they begin to attract or actually
stick or clumped together and eventually larger and larger masses are formed and individual. Areas around the sun
individual orbits around the sun. And as they grow larger and larger, they become known as protoplanets or young
planets, or sometimes even planetesimals as those protoplanets grow larger and larger.

Their gravity becomes larger and larger and they pull more of that dust and debris and their particular orbit. And they, it
all comes together. And the big one chunk eventually that protoplanet will sweep its entire orbit clear of all debris and
gases. And it'll all be come together in one planet.

In 2006, the IAU, the international astronomical union defined a planet as having three characteristics. A planet is an
orbit around the sun. Okay. The planet has sufficient mass, meaning it gets big enough. That it's gravity is large enough
that it will overcome rigid bodily forces. That means all those rocks and stones and huge chunks of asteroids that come
together and kind of an irregular shape.

If the object is big enough to become a planet, to be considered a planet, then the gravity is high enough strong enough
that it overcomes rigid bodily forces and in, in assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium. Well, a sphere is the most stable
shape. No. Uh, and that's why eggs are close to being spheres. It's the most stable shape known.
So hydrostatic equilibrium, meanings pushing out as equal to the pulling in, and it assumes a round shape or a globe
shape. So planet has to be big enough that it's it's gravity, its own gravity has forced it into the shape of, of a globe. A
planet has also has to have cleared its neighborhood around its orbit of all other debris.

So. All of the planets that we think of our planets, except for Pluto. What we see when we look at Pluto is two things.
One Pluto isn't exactly in that flat disc, its orbit is actually wildly skewed from the rest of the planets. And it's actually not
large enough to have cleared its neighborhood of debris.

There are other large objects in and around Pluto. So as of right now, Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

so the young earth has now developed around that young son and the first earth, the younger was probably
homogeneous, homo, meaning the same. And so it was the same throughout homogeneous, meaning the same
throughout a bunch of rocks, bunch of elements, some ice and water. But pretty much the same throughout during the
first billion or so years, maybe, maybe almost two but billion or so years as the earth was sweeping out its actual
neighborhood of debris.

Not only was it colliding with the debris in its orbit, but it was also colliding with other objects that were in the solar
system during this. Impact of asteroids and other solar debris plus its own gravitational pressure as it became larger, the
earth heated up and it became partially molten as it became partially molten gravity pulled heavier elements, such as
iron and nickel to the center of the earth, the friction of this internal movement, those elements rubbing together
literally further heated the earth.

So this additional heating caused lighter materials and materials. Silica sand and oxygen and aluminum. There's a lot of
aluminum in our crust. All those lighter materials migrated to the earth surface. And that's what formed the crust. The
crust was solid. The ma the, the center of the mantle was more plastic.

Actually, the mantle is more like soft candle wax. And of course we think that the, uh, the core is partially liquid and
partially solid. And it's the solid spinning within the liquid that actually helps give us our magnetic field, nonetheless, the
earth. Cool. And that first surface and to solidify about 4.6 billion years ago.

And how do we know that? Well, we have fossil records, very few, but a few fossil records that date that far back, uh,
giving us the indication that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, soon after. That first formation, theoretically, it is
now thought that a collision with a Mars sized object smashed into the earth, all the interior of the earth kind of blew
out into space and all that Rocky material that blew out into space from that collision of that Marseilles object became
the mirror material that clumped together and formed our moon.

So the atmosphere, first atmosphere very likely was that hydrogen and helium that makes up most of the universe, but
that's very, very light. And the solar wind meaning the radiation that came from the sun as the sun began to burn that
solar wind, very likely stripped that hydrogen and helium away from the earth surface.

So the first atmosphere about 4.6 billion years ago, very likely that hydrogen. And that helium two most abundant
elements in the atmosphere. Once the sand, the sun began to fuse hydrogen and helium together that radiation that
moved out away from the sun is considered the solar wind and the lightness of those elements and that solar winds strip
that first atmosphere away.

These lighter elements could not be held by Earth's gravity. They escaped into space. The second atmosphere. That's
right. There's two. And what we're going to find out. Actually a third, the atmosphere we live in being the last, the
Earth's second atmosphere formed through a process of outgassing between about 4.4 and 4 billion years ago.
Outgassing is the outpouring of gases from the Earth's interior by volcanoes are volcanism all of the movement of the
earth. The Earth's crossed the plates rubbing against you yet. Each other plates, moving away, plates, colliding spaces,
opening up and just VOC volcanism in general, the volcanoes on the earth poured out gases.

They were injected into the atmosphere and they were water vapor and carbon dioxide and nitrogen. And those three
vapors vaporous water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. They replaced the first atmosphere. Notice. No oxygen there. The
earth was far enough away from the sun that unlike venous water was able to condense into clouds and rain in a vert.

Eventually the surface cooled enough for water to collect in the basin. Not the case at all. With Venus. Venus is too close
to the sun. It never cooled down all that water vapor remained gaseous and water. Vapor is an excellent greenhouse
gas. And one of the reasons why Venus is so hot. Caustic. It's also thought that I see comments and asteroids may have
also delivered some of the earth surface water during the heavy bombardment period of the early earth.

That probably lasted until about 3.8 billion years ago. Some theory suggests that maybe even the origins of life on earth
could have been deposited in this way. Meaning, um, single cell, uh, plants and animals may have been deposited in
earth. And some of those IC chunks that hit the earth and then heavy bombardment period.

The atmosphere of the earth, therefore has been changing since the formation of the earth, the first atmosphere
unknown, but likely hydrogen and helium then replaced throughout gassing sometime 4.3 to 4.4 billion years ago. That's
when the outgassing began. Right. During that heavy bombardment period, lots of volcanoes, lots of tectonics, lots of
explosions.

Uh, lots of energy and water vapor released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, methane ammonia, and plenty of
nitrogen. And then at some point around 4 billion years ago, maybe shortly before the first blue green algae show up the
earth surface. Those are plants and plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

While the carbon dioxide begins to be. Pulled down and oxygen release, but you see it doesn't get into the atmosphere
is free oxygen until about 2.3 to 2.5 billion years ago. At first, the oxygen is attacking other elements. So attacking iron in
the form of iron oxide rust, and that's where we see those red rocks.

Eventually there was enough oxygen that we saw the rise of oxygen from about 2.2 billion years ago up to its current
level today.

These rather strange looking lumps of Brown rock are actually really unusual and rare living organisms. They're called
stromatolites and they are found only in a few places in the world. And the best place on earth to see them. As right
here in shark Bay, a top layer is actually made up of millions of microscopic organisms, mostly a type of bacteria called
cyanobacteria that gets its energy.

From sunlight, these bacteria did something extraordinary as they took in sunlight and food to synthesized, they broke
the chemical bonds in water, releasing something that would completely change the planet. They released oxygen.

My lights are really special because they were some of the first organisms to produce oxygen and not just in a small
amount.

around two and a half billion years ago. Stromatolites covered all the oceans, shallows, mottled, Wade, and all of them
were pumping out.

Was to lead to some of the most profound changes in the history of the earth.

Ultimately the planet would have an atmosphere rich in oxygen

but before that could happen, something got in the way. Two and a half billion years ago, these rocks were formed deep
beneath the sea and they hold the key to what happened to the oxygen. Bubbling out from the stomata lights back then
the seas were rich in iron. That was dissolved in the water. Adam Webb is a geologist who has.

I studied best engine period in Earth's history. Since those oxygen levels started to rise in the ocean from the
stromatolites it mixed with and reacted with the iron and basically rusted. And it was this Russ that settled on the ocean
floor. It was this reaction that stopped the oxygen from leaving the ocean.

The layers of rust were laid down all across the world. Eventually turning into seams of iron or huge quantities of it can
be seen in thick layers all around this main busy on Rustin and this material settled on the ocean floor liar after lion
started to rise up and you ended up with huge, great big thicknesses of rock.

Exactly what we're seeing now today.

The iron and the oceans had all rusted. There was none left for the oxygen to react with.

So now there was only one place for the oxygen to go. It left the oceans and failed the atmosphere. No event has been
more important to the story of life on the planet. First thing, oxygen dead was give the planet a vital protective shield as
oxygen roars through the atmosphere, into the stratosphere and formed a layer, the yours on land.

It shielded the planet from lethal ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun loving complex life to flourish on the surface
of our planet.

So photosynthesis now I've got these first blue-green algae and they have chlorophyll in them. They take the sun's
energy, they take that carbon dioxide. They take that water and they, and they create sugars or carbohydrates that they
use to grow and they release oxygen. The overall reaction of photosynthesis use utilizes six carbon oxide, molecules, and
six water molecules to produce one sugar molecule and six.

Oxygen molecules. So where do we get the first oxygen photosynthesis? Very likely taking down the carbon and
releasing docks.

Other ways there'll be got oxygen in the atmosphere. Well, we had H two, we had water vapor. We had H two O that
molecule in the middle of the one that looks like Mickey mouse. That's your age? Two. Oh, so what happened? The rise
of oxygen occurred to, to do to two processes, photosynthesis, which we just looked at and this other one, the photo
disassociation of water vapor.

Well, an association is a gathering things. So a gathering of a thing. So association of water vapor is the association of
hydrogen and oxygen H2O. This association is the breaking that up photo refers to light. So look at that purple arrow.
That is the UV light. Of the sun coming in and banging into that water vapor molecule in the atmosphere it's floating
around Mickey mouse, all happy UV, ultra violet rays, which is we know burning rays.

They're dangerous. They bang ended up molecule. They split apart the hydrogen escapes into the atmosphere, but
oxygen wants to combine with something else. It always combines with something else. Oxygen is never by itself in the
atmosphere. So it combines with another oxygen molecule giving us. Oh, too.

When you see oxygen tanks, they never say, Oh, on them. They say, Oh, two that's oxygen that we can breathe. So
photosynthesis and the photo disassociation of water vapor is what allows for the rise of oxygen from also got ozone in
the same way where oxygen in the atmosphere was struck by ultraviolet radiation and that caused to free oxygen
atoms, a split, maybe.
Joining with another oxygen, um, molecule to create Oh two, but possibly joining with Oh two to create Oh three and Oh
three. Well, Oh three is ozone. So as oxygen accumulated between 2.1 and 1.5 billion years ago, how current
atmosphere took shape by about 450 million years ago, there was enough oxygen in the atmosphere to allow for the
development of ozone Oh three and a thick enough.

Ozone layer was enough ozone to protect the earth from UV rays to allow for the development of land plants and
animals. Prior to that, the UV is too bright, too strong for land plant animals. So at about 450 million years ago, uh, that
is when we saw the development of land animals because UV radiation was being protected by the ozone layer.

The composition of the atmosphere on the left of the permanent gases, the gases that are virtually in the same
proportion throughout the first 50 miles of the atmosphere. You're your constant, permanent gases, nitrogen oxygen
argon, neon helium three hydrogen and Xenon. Nitrogen at about 78% in oxygen.

And about 21% when asked about the composition of the atmosphere, you need to know, hydrogen makes up about
78% in oxygen makes up about 21%. These other gases in the right. Water vapor CO2, methane nitrogen, uh, nitrous
oxide in Oh three. They're all in variable concentrations, but very, very small look how little Oh three.

There is ozone. Look how little nitrous and methane and even CO2 CO2. Now maybe representing closer to 39, maybe
even a, uh, of a four. Uh, 0.04 parts per million. That amount of CO2, as we all know, is increasing. And then water vapor
water vapor can vary between none and 4%. So this water vapor is highly variable and all those gases in the right, the
variable gases, those are all your greenhouse gases that would help keep the earth warm.

And there's way more. Water vapor, then carbon dioxide. There's way more monoxide than methane. And, uh, and
that's on the rise because of farming and nitris is also on the rise as well. Composition of the atmosphere, oxygen and
nitrogen make up 99 plus percent of the atmosphere and essentially in constant proportion, the lowest 50 miles of the
atmosphere.

There's a balance between the production and consumption of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere. Some. It's
created some as destroyed. Some goes into the ocean, sums comes out of the ocean, some plants release oxygen they
take in carbon dioxide. So there's this balance that is true. Fuck favor, greatly vary some place to place.

And from time to time, it exists in all three States as you know, liquid water and in gas, water vapor releases and retains
latent heat. When evaporation and condensation occurs, it has to be very, very important to us. This concept of the
latent heat of vaporization and the latent heat of condensation.

And of course, water vapor is the most important because of its abundance. Greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide is also an
effective greenhouse gas and the rise of carbon dioxide since the row of the, um, Industrial revolution is seen on the
hockey stick graph, which I'll show you in a moment. Methane is also becoming more recognized as a player in the global
greenhouse effect.

It's being addressed as an environmental concern as well. But the biggest environmental concern we hear about of
course is carbon dioxide.

Here is the hockey stick graph, a graph of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Now these are three very
important greenhouse gases, not including water vapor. Remember water vapor varies. Constantly from place to place
and from time to time from between 0% to 4%. So these are just, uh, these, uh, these gases that are less variable, there's
less concentration in the atmosphere, but we see with the hockey stick graph, this tremendous increase and the latter
part way out on the X.
So going back 2000 years, pretty constant proportions of those three gases through about the 15 hundreds in the 16
hundreds, massive planting of trees in North America actually pulled down a lot of the carbon dioxide in them during the
industrial revolution. Right. Uh, we see this a tremendous increase after the 1860s of all three of these greenhouse gases
and largely due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Wow. I mentioned that photochemical smog smog that we hear about is mainly ozone ozone combined with volatile,
organic compounds and nitrous oxides to create smog. So. Oh, zone at the surface is actually dangerous for us. Ozone
that protects us is up in the stratosphere way up in the atmosphere. So ozone is kind of got two rolls.

It's bad at the surface, but very, very good in the upper levels of the atmosphere. Photochemical, smog, combustion
processes, including motor vehicles, power stations, and fires, all major sources of nitrogen, oxides and volatile, organic
compounds. They all react in sunlight to form photochemical, oxidants, or ozone.

So ozone is good when it's way up there, but dab, when it's down to surface.

so let's talk a little bit about what the atmosphere does. The atmosphere presses down on us. That's atmospheric
pressure. You don't feel it you're accustomed to it, but all those molecules, whether it's nitrogen. 78% oxygen, 21%
carbon dioxide, water vapor, all those molecules, they have weight. And all of that mass of course, weight is a function
of mass and gravity.

You know, you weigh less than the moon, right? Your mass is the same, but the gravity is lower. So mass and weight are
not the same things, because weight is a function of gravity, the mass above any level. If I'm standing at the surface,
there is a mass of molecules vaporous molecules above me and the total weight of that mass equals the atmospheric
pressure, atmospheric pressure, all air molecules, whether the nitrogen oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous,
oxide, nitric oxide, they all have mass.

The total weight. Oh, the molecules in a column of air exerts pressure on the earth surface, that atmospheric pressure is
most commonly expressed in millibars. When looking at surface weather maps, atmospheric pressure is most commonly
expressed in millibars millibars is just another way of saying or, or, or, uh, or a leader.

It's just a, it's just a measurement of weight. So all the mass. Above a certain level on the planet. That way because of
gravity puts pressure on the ground and that's it. That's big pressure. Now gravity tends to pull the molecules towards
the earth surface. That makes sense. Right? The gravity is going to pull the molecules towards the earth surface.

So. There is increasing atmospheric pressure and the density of the air close to the surface with a rapid decrease in
pressure and density. As you climb up in the atmosphere and slower decrease as you move higher. I think about that all
the molecules are sort of packed tightly toward the earth surface because of gravity.

So the density. Of the air and the pressure is higher at the surface. And then it goes down as you go up in the
atmosphere. Oftentimes you talk about going up a mountain and we say the air is thinner up there. You've heard that.
I'm sure. Well, that's fewer molecules as you go higher in the atmosphere.

So, what is the density of the atmosphere? Well, density is mass per unit volume. That little curvy P is actually the Greek
symbol row. That's typically what's used for density. So density equals mass divided by volume. If you take a whole,
whole lot more stuff and you put it in the same volume, it's more dense.

If you have less stuff and put it in the same volume, it's less dense. Take a one inch cube of styrofoam and not much
there. It's pretty late. Take a one inch cube of led and it's way, way heavier. Why because there's way more mass. The
molecules of lead are closely packed together. The molecules of the styrofoam are loosely packed together.
So less mass than the styrofoam, it weighs less. It has less density. The same volume of led has way more density. Air
density is the number of air molecules divided by the volume. The molecules occupy air has greater density. When there
was a greater number of air molecules occupying the same volume air has less density.

When there are a few molecules occupying the same volume air has less density higher in the atmosphere. The air is
thinner up there. Air has much greater density, closer to the surface where there are more air molecules and the air is
more dense. Now we will look at the structure of the atmosphere based on density and pressure, the density of the air
and the pressure of the air at different levels.

And we have two different pictures. The one on the left, the one on the right on the left, the red line being air pressure,
the blue line being here, density. And you can see that at the surface because on our Y axis, it goes from zero to 500
that's kilometers. And on our X access, it goes from a small amount into a high amount.

And in that left-hand, I mean, 80% of the picture, your air pressure and air density are high at the surface. They decrease
rapidly with height initially, and then they're decreased, slows down as they go up in the atmosphere. And that's
presented to you graphically on the right side of that picture. You can see the atmosphere there with the air molecules
being pointed out.

And if there are. I'm 100 air molecules there. Then you know that 78 of those are nitrogen and about 21 of them are
oxygen. So we have all these air molecules and because of gravity, most of the air molecules are pulled and they gather
at the surface. And that's why you have higher air pressure and higher air density at the surface.

And both decreased with height rapidly, adverse than less rapidly as you go up in height. And again, look at where we
have the, uh, the arrow. Pointing from air molecules. That is why we say the air is thinner up there. As you go up up in
the atmosphere, there are literally fewer air molecules to breathe or to take in order to use.

And that counts for going up the side of a mountain. And by the way, on the right-hand side Fisher, you can see the
mountain. And again, that X access is from low pressure to high pressure. 1000 millibars, that's the number we're going
to use. Uh, for surface pressure, generally about a thousand millibars and then a zero being there all the way at the Y
axis.

And the Y axis again is altitude kilometers, uh, on the right-hand side miles on the left-hand side. And you can see as you
go up Mount Everest, just about at the summit of Mount Everest, a full 50% of the air molecules in the atmosphere are
below that level. And you can see how that plays out in that right-hand graph.

And then as you go further up in the atmosphere, you get up to just. Below 10 miles and 90% of the atmospheres blow
that location. And then you get up to display 20 miles and 99% of the atmosphere is below that. So the air is thinner up
there. If you are standing at the base of Mount Everest at sea level, atmospheric pressure is about a thousand millibars.

If you get to the very top of Mount Everest, What's above you there. How many molecules are above you there at the
very top of Mount Everest atmosphere? Pressure may be about 300. Millibars it? It goes down rapidly with height. If you
were about 18, 19 miles up in the atmosphere, atmospheric pressure may be 100 millibars and the same thing happens.

With density. There's very dense at the surface. We can breathe in. It's easy to breathe as you go up Mount Everest, it
gets harder and harder to breathe and the air density becomes much lower. The air is thinner up there. Gravity
compresses, air molecules at the surface resulting in air density and atmospheric pressure being greatest at the surface
and decreasing rapidly with height.

There's also a thermal structure to the atmosphere. When you go up a mountain side, does it get warmer? No, it gets
colder. The higher you go in the atmosphere, it gets colder. The thermal structure of the atmosphere, air temperature,
normally. Decreases the height. Not always, not absolutely, but normally decreases with height.
The rate at which air temperature decreases the height, it's called the lapse rate. The rate of which air temperature
decreases at height, it's called the lapse rate. The average lobster rate is about six and a half centimeters per 1000
meters. And inversion occurs when air temperature increases the height.

We can classify the vertical structure of the atmosphere based on temperature. Many times in this class, I will tell you
that science is all about classification, scientists, classify things. If you have a shell scientist and he gathers 10,000 shells
at the seashore, he may take all the pink shells. And put them in one pile and all the fan shaped shelves and put them in
another pile and all the cone shaped shells and put them in a third pile.

And then that scientist will then classify each shell based on the pilots in. So scientists classify and here we're going to
classify the different levels. Of the atmosphere based on the thermal structure, the vertical thermal structure of the
atmosphere. So let's do the surface where we are and know the very first layer or the atmosphere based on thermal
structure is known as the troposphere.

Now Tropo. Is a word that means to turn because in the troposphere, the air is constantly turning. There is upward
vertical motion air was going up and there was a downward vertical motion. Air is going down, Eric and rise off the
surface or sink down to the surface. And that constant turning creates the troposphere, nearly all of the weather that we
experience.

Virtually all occurs in the troposphere at the top of the troposphere, the dash line is the Tropo pause that separates the
troposphere from the next layer of the atmosphere, the stratosphere. And then of course you see above the
stratosphere as the trial. Strato pause, and then above the Mesosphere, the Meza pause.

So let's talk about why there's these thermal structures of thermal layers in the lowest layers of the atmosphere, the
environmental lapse rate, or the rate at which temperature decreases with height and the environment is again about
six and a half. Degrees Celsius per thousand meters. And you can see our red line.

We start there at the surface at about 59, 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and that blind then goes down at decreases with
height until you get up to the tropopause, it's a pretty steady, constant decrease. Now in the real atmosphere, there
may be fluctuations and that temperature drop in there may even be very small layers in which temperature increases.

For a distance with height, those small inversions, but generally it is a decrease all the way up to the trope was a trope
spas. So the troposphere up to about 11,000 meters contains all the weather of the, uh, that we experience constantly
turned over by air occurrence and the air is. Or the air temperature is falling at the trope of pause and be of above for a
few miles.

And actually the temperature remains the same. We referred to that as ISO thermal, it remains the same and then
comes the first big inversion where air temperature increases with height. Now I'm not telling you that it's warm up.
There are those air temperatures are still 20, 30, 60 degrees below zero Celsius up to 75 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

So it's very, very cold, but the temperature actually increases with height and you can see on the left between 20 and 30
kilometers up the ozone maximum. And that's why temperature increases with height and the stratosphere. That's
where all the ozone is. And ozone is an excellent greenhouse gas. It absorbs the infrared radiation.

They absorbs all the radiation, the sun, or the ultra violet specifically. And those molecules of ozone begin to move very
quickly. And therefore they warm up and creating the stratosphere. The air actually gets warmer as you go up because.
Air is warm as you go up. It is stratified. It's Strato is a term that means layered.
The stratosphere is the stratified layer, ISO thermal, or an inversion. It creates a stable layer that stratifies 97% of the
ozone is found in the stratosphere creating this warm layer. So why is air getting warmer as you go up? Why is that a
stable atmosphere? Why is that stratify? The atmosphere? Well, warm air rises.

Right. Hot air balloons, go up warm air rises. If the air above you is even warmer than that, balloon will not go up. It'll
actually sink back down. And that's the stable aspect of the stratosphere about the stratosphere as the mezzo sphere,
the middle layer temperature, again, decreases with height and then in the XO, thermosphere into the exosphere you
see a rapid increase with, with height, but again, There are so few molecules of air.

So few molecules, molecules of nitrogen and oxygen that even though they may be moving very, very quickly because
they're being agitated or excited by the incoming solar radiation. Um, there are so few molecules that you actually can't
feel that heat. Yes, the individual molecules may have high speed and therefore high temperature, but there are so few
molecules.

You can't actually feel that heat. So that high temperature of the thermal and excess here, uh, is, um, A bit understood.
You can actually feel the heat up there. The molecules are just moving that quickly.

So what cup of water is in the troposphere air, temperature, air pressure, humidity, clouds, precipitation, visibility, and
wind things. You've mostly all heard of. And you already know what they are. The temperature of this. Degree of
hotness or coldness of the air, the air pressure atmospheric pressure force of air over a given area humidity.

The measure of water vapor in the air clouds visible, massive water droplets. Now get this water. Vapor is invisible. If it's
vapor, it's invisible. Look around the room that you're in right now. There's humidity in that room. Maybe not much.
There's water vapor in that room. You can't see it. Water vapor is invisible.

Water vapor is basically individual water molecules floating around in the atmosphere. When molecules condense into
droplets water droplets, they become cloud droplets and a mass of water. Droplets is a cloud. Those water vapor
molecules can also freeze into ice crystals and show up as clouds. If enough ice crystals form together.

And grow large enough. It can fall as snow. If enough water droplets grow together and become large enough, it can fall
as rain. The visibility of course is the distance one can see, and the wind is the horizontal movement of air due to
pressure differences, a pressure gradient. The difference between high pressure and low pressure causes the wind to
blow where high pressure pushes air toward low pressure.

And that is a horizontal movement of air or the wind.

This is a synoptic surface weather map. The surface map, of course, because it's showing the features of the surface
synoptic, meaning at the same time telling us that we know that the temperature in British Columbia is 51 degrees.
While the temperature on Lake Okeechobee is 83. At the same time, the other features you see are the high pressure
centers.

With winds blowing clockwise and outward from the highs, the low pressure centers with winds blowing counter-
clockwise and inward into the lows. And of course the fronts that are associated with that area of low pressure. Why are
there fronts? Fronts are simply the leading edge of a certain type of air mass replacing another air mats in the case of
the cold front.

That is cold air replacing warm and humid air. In the case of the warm front, it is warm and humid air replacing cold air
with this area of low pressure and the counterclockwise flow around it. It's bringing cold, dry air out of Canada, South,
and creating that cold front, the leading edge of the cold air and more moist air off the Gulf of Mexico to the North,
creating that warm front.
All right, that's going to pretty much bring this part of chapter one to an end. I want to leave you with an interesting.
Illustration or a little video here showing that the surface features I just talked about are connected to the upper level
features. And what you're looking at at the top of this cube are the upper level winds winds blowing at 15, 20, 25,000
feet up in the atmosphere and where those winds go around, what would be an upper level low as the winds move into
that upper-level low, they converge and as they exit away from that upper-level load, they divert.

It's just like a bunch of. Cars on an eight lane highway coming to two or three lanes, they converged together. And then
as they go back out to eight lanes, they diverge apart. What happens in cars have to all merge together while they slow
down. And then when they diverged or they move into eight lanes again, they speed back up.

Well that converging air in the upper levels, forces air to sync and create your high pressure and that diverging air in the
upper levels forces, air to rise and creates. Low pressure again, in the upper lever levels. As the air converges, it can't go
up because the tropopause, it has to go down and it creates that high pressure where the air diverges on the East side of
the low air is moving away too.

So to replace that air, you can't pull it from above the tropopause. So you pull it from. The surface and you get rising air
or low pressure. Once that, that low pressure forms, you need a counterclockwise turning around it. Then you get the
cold air being pulled from North to South on the West side of the low and the warm air being pulled from South to North
on the East side of the low.

And that's where your cold front and your warm front forum. And there is your very typical, extra tropical cyclone.
Alright. This wraps up chapter two, lots more to talk about and we'll see you. Well, let me check that this wraps up
chapter one, thinking about chapter two, because that's when we'll see you next.