Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
Standard atmospheric pressure at sea level is defined as 101,325 pascals (about 1,013 millibars). The higher you go, the lower the pressure — on the summit of Everest, pressure is less than a third of that at sea level, making it very hard to breathe.
Meteorologists launch weather balloons twice a day from hundreds of sites around the world to measure temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind at different heights. The balloons rise to about 35 kilometres before bursting, then a small parachute returns the instruments to the ground.
The Indian monsoon is so important to agriculture that a failure of the rains can trigger widespread food shortages across the subcontinent. India receives about 75% of its annual rainfall during the four-month monsoon season from June to September.
Sleet in Britain refers to a mixture of rain and snow, or snowflakes that partially melt before reaching the ground. In the USA, the word 'sleet' means something different — ice pellets that form when rain refreezes before hitting the surface.
Modern aircraft are designed to act as Faraday cages — metal enclosures that conduct electricity around the outside rather than through the interior. Commercial planes are struck by lightning roughly once a year on average, but passengers are almost never harmed.
The hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica was discovered in 1985 by British scientists at the Halley Research Station. International action followed quickly — the Montreal Protocol of 1987 phased out ozone-depleting chemicals, and the ozone layer is slowly recovering.
Tropical rainforests generate much of their own rainfall through a process called transpiration, where trees release water vapour through their leaves. The Amazon rainforest produces so much moisture that it creates its own weather patterns, sometimes called flying rivers.
Valley fog forms on calm, clear nights when the ground loses heat rapidly by radiation, cooling the air just above it below the dew point. In the morning, sunlight quickly burns off the fog from the top down, creating a beautiful effect of clouds filling the valley.
Antarctic blizzards can be so severe that visibility drops to zero within seconds and wind speeds regularly exceed 200 kilometres per hour. Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1912 was devastated partly by extreme blizzard conditions on the return journey.
The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the global average, a phenomenon called Arctic amplification. As sea ice melts, the darker ocean surface absorbs more sunlight instead of reflecting it, causing even more warming in a feedback loop.