CHAPTER 4 Concept Review
The Human Sphere: China’s Dust Storms
1. What is desertification? How does it relate to dust storms?
4.1 Measuring and Mapping the Wind
2. What instrumentation is used to measure wind speed and direction?
3. What does the Beaufort scale categorize? On what does it base each category?
4. How are winds named? What is a prevailing wind?
5. What are three ways to portray wind on a map?
4.2 Air Pressure and Wind
6. How is air pressure measured?
7. How do thermal pressure and dynamic pressure create differences in air pressure? Explain each.
8. What are isobars and what do they represent?
9. Compare station pressure with sea-
10. What are the three controls on wind speed and direction? How does each work?
11. Describe the circulation systems of cyclones and anticyclones. In which direction does air rotate in each of these systems in the Northern Hemisphere?
4.3 Global Atmospheric Circulation Patterns
12. What are the four global pressure systems? Describe the atmospheric circulation that results in these systems.
13. What causes the ITCZ? Why is it always near the equator?
14. Describe the moisture and temperature characteristics of each global pressure system, as well as where it is found geographically.
15. Describe the prevailing surface winds: the trade winds, the westerlies, and the polar easterlies. Where does each occur? Explain why they occur where they do.
16. What and where are the doldrums? What and where are the horse latitudes? What causes them?
17. Where is the polar jet stream?
18. What are Rossby waves? Of what significance are their ridges and troughs to the weather?
19. What happens to the four global pressure systems as the seasons change? What do they do in July? What do they do in January?
20. How do landmasses affect global pressure systems in winter? In summer? In this regard, why does the East Coast of the United States receive summer rainfall while the West Coast does not?
4.4 Wind Systems: Sea Breezes to Gravity Winds
21. What is the relationship between the geographic scale and the duration of wind systems? Give examples.
22. Review the major wind systems. Where is each found, and what causes each?
23. What is a monsoon? What three factors create the Asian monsoon? Describe the summer and winter weather of the Asian monsoon. Explain why they are different.
24. What hazards do Santa Ana winds present?
4.5 Geographic Perspectives: Farming the Wind
25. How is wind kinetic energy converted to electrical energy?
26. Where is it windiest in the United States? What is the inherent problem with this region as a source of wind power?
27. Why is storing and transporting wind energy so important to the growing wind energy market?
28. What methods are available to store wind energy?
29. How are birds and bats killed by wind turbines? Are there solutions to this problem?
30. What does NIMBY stand for? How does that term apply to wind power?
31. Generating power from wind energy is a response to what larger problem? Does wind energy completely solve that problem?