The final will take place on Monday, June 10 2002.  It will be of the same format as the midterms:  several short answer questions followed by multiple choice.  You will not need a calculator, and it is not open book.  The test will emphasize subjects discussed within the last three weeks.  Below are some things that you might find it useful to consider in preperation-

What is the greenhouse effect?  What are selective absorbers? What do greenhouse gases do?  What gases compose the greenhouse gases?

What is the ozone hole?  Why is it significant?

We discussed three temperature scales in class.  Know the difference.

What is weather?  What is climate?  Why are they different?  Which one is easier to predict, and why?

What is a black body?  The two main relations about black bodies discussed were the Stefan Boltzman (E ~ T^4) and Wein's Law  (wavelength = 2987/T ).  Know how to use them and what they signify.  How do they relate to radiative equilibrium?

The vertical structure of the atmosphere includes:  Troposphere (where the weather is; temp decreases with height ), Stratosphere (where the ozone is; temp increases with height),  Mesosphere (temp decreases with height), and Thermosphere (temp increases with height).

What causes seasons?  What does the earth's tilt has to do with this? What are the effects of periodic temperature cycles (seasonal and diurnal)? How does the difference in energy balance from the amount of energy the earth receives to the amount it radiates affect the earth's temperature at a specific latitude?  Important terms are:  insolation, atmospheric path length, albedo.

Know about sea breezes, (how they develop, and what they have to do with the diurnal cycle) and monsoons (how they develop, and what they have to do with the seasonal cycle).

We discussed the ideal gas law intimately.  Know how pressure, density, and temperature relate.    Be able to deal with the changes due to one quantity held and another altered.
Know how pressure, temperature, and density change as you move vertically.  Remember, pressure is the weight of the entire column of air above a unit area.

Humidity concepts included the ideas of vapor pressure, saturation vapor pressure, relative humidity, dew point, and how the temperature changes during evaporation and condensation. What is specific heat?  What is latent heat, and what does it have to do with phase changes?

LAPSE RATES!  The lapse rate is a description of the atmosphere, not an atmospheric phenomena.   Three different lapse rates were discussed:  environmental, moist adiabatic, and dry adiabatic.  Be able to identify absolute stability, absolute instability, and conditional instability from a vertical sounding.  Be able to guess at what type of cloud would appear given a certain lapse rate, and what type of lapse rate one might need to see a particular type of cloud.

The lifting mechanisms for clouds include convection, topographic effects, and convergence.  Know what each of these means.  Raindrop production involves CCN, the curvature effect, and the collision/coalescence process.  Know how these operate, and in what order the growth occurs.  A process similar to the curvature effect works for growth of snowflakes or hail called the Bergeron process.

Be able to explain the causes of white clouds, blue sky, red sunsets, black sky, rainbows, corona, and glories.

 What is the cause of the jet stream, where is it, and why is it there?  How does the Coriolis force work?  (remember, the Coriolis force is latitude and velocity dependant!)  What circulation develops given a pressure gradient or a temperature gradient?  What is the geostrophic balance?  How would you draw in a geostrophic wind given a pressure map?  (Remember that friction only affects the surface layer!)  How do you get a sea level pressure in the mountains?  What is the hydrostatic balance, and how do you determine pressures given a height in a still, dry atmosphere?  How does a height map translate into pressures?

The majority of the final is over the last third of the class, during which the following material was covered:

What are the main atmospheric circulation features?  Where are the trade winds, the horse latitudes, the polar front, the doldrums, and the ITCZ?  What pressure, wind, cloud cover, and precipitation are characteristic of each?  What is a Hadley cell?  What is the three cell model?  How do both of these work?  Why do they determine where deserts and rainforests are?  How do they control the winds and precipitation for a given latitude?

Know the signs of cold and warm fronts, and be able to draw one given a map of either pressure, temperature, or wind speed.

Why do we have mid latitude cyclones?  What is the structure to a mid latitude cyclone?  Where and at what time of year do they occur? How do the fronts behave during the life cycle?

The five methods of weather forecasting are:  climatology, persistence, trend, analog and numerical weather forecasts.  What is involved for each?  Be able to produce a basic forecast for the first three.  How do they compare in accuracy?

What fuels a hurricane?  How are they structured?  When and where would you expect a hurricane, and why then and there?

Weather phenomena unique to Puget Sound  (Marine Push, Sound Breeze, Puget Sound Convergence Zone, Rain Shadow, Pass Wind Storms (Katabatic Winds), and Puget Sound Wind Storms (Channel Winds)) will be covered.  Know each of these features, and where, when and why they occur.

What is the basic mechanism of a thunderstorm? Why don't we get thunderstorms in the Pacific Northwest?
 

Gueten Gluck.  Ich wird meine Daume druecken.