The exam will include true false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, cloud identification, and short answer sections. The following is a list of what I want you to get out of the chapters. Disclaimer: There is likely to be some material on the exam that we discussed or that was part of your homework that is not explicitly in this list, although in my mind the list covers that information. I believe that if you understand the material below, you should be in very good shape, but if you think there is a question on the exam that was not part of the study guide, that will not be sufficient to make me feel it was an unfair question. I consider the following to be fair game: anything I explained in a lecture, anything that was on the homework, anything that is on any of the active learning exercises that we did, and anything below. Plus you should know and understand two "weather proverbs" that I used to start a lecture.
Chapter 1: Properties of the Atmosphere: Be able to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius in either direction (you won't need to convert to or from kelvin, but you will want to know how the kelvin scale is defined); understand the 3 major mechanisms by which the Earth's tilt causes seasons; know enough about seasons to avoid saying that they have anything to do with distance from the sun; know how and why the temperature changes in the atmosphere as you go up through the troposphere and into the stratosphere; know how and why pressure changes as you rise in the atmosphere; be able to give an explanation of what causes atmospheric pressure; know what the average sea-level pressure is; be able to convert from temperature and dewpoint temperature into vapor pressure, saturation vapor pressure, and relative humidity, using a figure similar to figure 1.2; understand why homes feel dry in the winter, and how relative humidity changes over the course of a day (assuming no change in vapor pressure); be able to explain how, why, and in which direction the temperature of the atmosphere changes as water converts between solid, liquid, and gas; understand the molecular differences between solids, liquids, and gasses; understand what it means to be supercooled, and why supercooling occurs; be able to interpret a wind barb; about how thick is the toposphere, and what are its major constituents; Terms to know: kelvin, troposphere, stratosphere, vapor pressure, relative humidity, saturated, unsaturated, dewpoint temperature, saturation vapor pressure, evaporation, condensation, melting, freezing, sublimination, deposition, latent heat, supercooled, knot.
Chapter 2: Meteorological Measurements: Understand the UTC time convention, and what it means when a map says 0Z or 12Z; be able to interpret a Stuve diagram (Fig. 2.6), though you don't need to understand a skew-T; what information do rawinsondes provide that we can't get from other sources; what can you measure with radar and doppler radar; don't worry about hodographs, how radar works, the doppler shift, or how we construct wind profiles; understand what type of information you can get from a visible satellite image, an infrared satellite image, and a water vapor satellite image, and how you can use them in combination to analyze things like cloud height, jet stream position, and so on. Terms to know: Daylight Savings Time, Rawinsonde, sounding, inversion, infrared
Chapter 3: Weather Maps: Be able to look at a surface station plot and determine the temperature, dewpoint temperature, cloud cover, wind speed and direction, and significant weather; what is the relationship between surface pressure and sea-level pressure on a weather map; understand how to construct a contour map (pressure or temperature); why do we use pressure as a vertical coordinate, and how does that work; how are temperature and atmospheric "thickness" (pressure at a given height). Terms to know: 500-mb level (or other level), jetstream.
Chapter 4: Forecasting and Simulating Severe Weather How has the accuracy of weather forecasts changed over the last 30 years; if we have made such great strides in our understanding of weather and in our observational capabilities, why have predictions not improved more; why is grid size so important; why are the results of weather models not more accurate? Terms to know: grid size, ensemble forecast.
Chapter 5: Understand the concept of stability, and how it relates to the atmosphere; why does air cool as it rises; know that the dry adiabatic lapse rate is 10 degrees C per kilometer, and know what that means; how does moisture in the atmosphere affect the lapse rate, and why is the moist adiabatic lapse rate not constant; be able to determine whether the atmosphere is stable, conditionally unstable, or unstable, and how does this relate to the development of clouds; be able to calculate an air parcel's lifting condensation level; be able to determine an air parcel's level of free convection; what are the four major mechanisms that can lift air, and how do they work (frontal wedging, lifting by mountains, local convergence, and surface heating); you need to understand why the Lifted Index (LI) works as a measure of the likelihood and severity of thunderstorms, but you don't need to understand the other indices (although they are interesting); understand the idea of capping, and why severe thunderstorms generally require capping to form. Terms to know: lapse rate, dry adiabatic lapse rate, moist adiabatic lapse rate, adiabatic, lifting condensation level, capping, level of free convection.
Clouds: Know how to distinguish various cloud types. First, look at the shape. Cumulus clouds involve vertical development, while stratus clouds are sheet-like. We now know that this is because cumulus clouds develop in an unstable atmosphere and so grow, while stratus clouds are the result of either forced lifting above the LCL (by fronts, mountains, etc), or cooling of the air below its dewpoint (morning fog and clouds, for example). Nimbus means that clouds are undergoing precipitation. The other distinguishing factor is height. If a cloud is near the ground (i.e. less than about 2 km at its base), then we don't add any modifier to the cloud name. However, if it is a middle cloud (about 2-6 km at its base), then we precede the cloud name with "alto", while if it is a high cloud (over 6 km) then it is cirrus. Simple enough. We can mix types as well. With high clouds, if they are just wispy tendrils, we simply call them cirrus. If they are a large sheet, we call it cirrostratus. You can always see the sun through a cirrostratus cloud. If they have regular patterns then we call it cirrocumulus. Notice that cirrocumulus clouds would be called cumulostratus if they were closer to the ground, but we only want to have a single modifier on any given name, so we go with the cirro part. This is OK, because you rarely see individual heaped clouds at the heaped level. At the next lower level, we have altostratus. Altostratus can be hard to tell from cirrostratus, but remember that cirrostratus clouds are made of ice crystals (because they're so high) whereas altostratus clouds are often mostly water vapor. Because of this, the sun usually looks "fuzzy" through altostratus clouds, and has a distinct ring around it through cirrostratus clouds. Sometimes altostratus clouds are thick enough to rain, although it is never really a very heavy rain. If this happens, you promote them to nimbostratus, and drop the alto part. Hence, you never have to worry about how high a rain cloud is. Altocumulus differ from cirrocumulus most obviously in that they are larger--a good rule of thumb (ha ha) is to hold your finger at arms-length, and see if your finger can block an entire cloud. If so, call it cirrocumulus, otherwise, altocumulus. Again, generally what you call altocumulus could properly be called altocumulostratus, but because we don't often see individual puffy clouds at this level, we just go with altocumulus. If you see individual puffy clouds, they are always cumulus. Finally, at the ground level, you have cumulus, stratus, and cumulostratus (a mix between the two). For the latter, look for patterning or patchiness in a sheet-like cloud. If it is raining from a stratus cloud, you call it nimbostratus. If it is raining from a cumulus cloud, you call it cumulonimbus. A virga is rain falling from a cloud that evaporates before it hits the ground. It usually looks like a triangle beneath the cloud. Terms to know: stratus, cumulus, cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, altocumulus, altostratus, cumulonimbus, nimbostratus, virga.
...And that's pretty much it.