Kelsey Cobb
Quiz 2 retake/makeup 
71. Natural electrical discharge of short duration and high voltage. Small bits of ice (frozen drops of rain)
they all bump into each other causing an electrical charge. The whole cloud fills up with electrical
charges and the ground creates a positive charge under the cloud causing lightning to strike. Lightning is
dangerous because people think it’s beautiful to look at so they don’t see how dangerous. Lots of people
are struck by lightning every year, more than hurricanes or tornados.
72. A tornado is a rotating Colum of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground. Tornados from
when warm moist air (gulf of Mexico) meets cool dry air (from Canada) and cause an unstable air. When
the wind direction changes and an increase in wind speed with increasing height creates a horizontal
spinning effect in the lower atmosphere. Rising air within the updraft tilts the rotating air from
horizontal to vertical causing a tornado.
73. Tornados are most common in tornado ally in America because like I said in question 72 that the
warm air coming up from Mexico meets with the cool dry air coming from Canada, this causing unstable
air and the perfect conditions for a tornado. In southern states peak tornado season is from March
through May.
74. A waterspout is a weak tornado that occurs over water. Sometimes they can move over islands and
cause damage. Im not sure if they occur off the Oregon coast because we basically have only cool dry air
closer to Canada’s climate, very rarely do we see weather like the Gulf of Mexico.
75. Tropical weather- the excess heat and moisture contribute to a lot of instability. Tropical cyclones
don’t require temperature contrast for development. The temperature is relatively uniform. In the
tropics front don’t really exist.
76. A hurricane is a huge storm. Hurricanes usually last for over a week. They move over the ocean.
They gather heat and energy from contact with the warm ocean water. Hurricanes rotate
COUNTECLOCKWISE in the north. And CLOCKWISE in the south. The storm is at its worst in the “eye
wall”.
77. Hurricanes only form over really warm ocean water, the atmosphere must cool over very quickly the
higher you go. Also, the wind must be blowing in the same direction at the same speed to force the air
upward from the ocean surface. The Coriolis force is needed to create the spinning in the hurricane and
it becomes weak near the equator so hurricanes never form there.
78. Tropical depression > tropical storm > Hurricane
79. In the Atlantic they generally move from east to west with the easterly trade winds.
80. Strong winds of a Hurricane can uproot trees, throw cares and level building. Storm surges can cause
flooding. Tornados can form during hurricanes.
81. Scientist use ice core and sea floor drillings to look at isotopes found in creatures that were on earth
back then. From there they can determine what the composition of our atmosphere by what is inside
the shells of the prokaryotes.
82. For the last 50 million years the Earth has been cooling and it is now becoming clear that that this
long term cooling trend is maybe reversed in the last few decades. On top of that our carbon dioxide
levels have been rapidly on the rise in recent years.
83. Some of the external forces that lead to global climate change are Solar outputs, Earth-sun geometry
and interstellar dust.
84. The Milankovitch theory- That as the Earth travels through space around the sun cyclical variations
in the three elements of Earth-Sun geometry combine to produce variations in the amount of solar
energy that reaches Earth.
89. The climate systems on Earth are atmosphere, Ocean, Land, Ice and Biosphere. It’s clear that climate
change is affecting all of our climate systems. The most observable and one with the most attention on
it would probably be Ice. I’m sure almost everyone has seen the picture of a polar bear that is sad
because his habitat is melting causing another climate system to change; our sea levels are on the rise
due to melting ice caps on the poles.