Weather and Climate:

Test Structure:
Minnesota teacher licensure standards require all elementary teachers to know and apply the fundamental concepts and principles of earth and space science.   Quizzes are in two parts, the first part to measure knowledge, the second to practice and test your application of that knowledge.  In general, the application questions are harder than the knowledge ones.  Knowledge questions will comprise about 60% of each quiz, application questions about 40%.

K-6 Content Knowledge Standards Covered:

Standard:  Understand changes in earth and sky
Understand the relationships among air temperature, capacity to hold water, humidity, dewpoint, decompression of air, condensation, evaporation, and formation of clouds, rain, and dew.  For example, be able to draw a picture, labeling movements of air, changes in temperature, changes in pressure, condensation and evaporation, which clearly shows how God makes a cloud.  hint:  start at the ground, and go up to where the cloud forms.

Standard:  Understand the structure of the earth system, including hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere
Know the behavior of winds in relationship to low pressure, high pressure, and isobars taking into account the effect of the Earth's rotation.

Standard:  Understand the structure of the earth system, including hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere
Understand the heat balance of the Earth, including incoming energy, outgoing energy, energy absorption and energy emission, and the forms the energy takes.

Standard:  Understand changes in earth and sky
Be able to predict how changes in the Earth system, such as increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, changes in ocean temperature, changes in plant life, and increasing snow/ice cover might effect Earth's climate.

Standard:  Understand the History of the Earth
Know and understand the evidence indicating that the climate in our own region was once very different.

Example Test Questions for Knowledge Part

1)  Draw a graph illustrating how the solubility of water in air (maximum amount of water that the air can hold in solution) changes with temperature.

2)  Which of the following is an example of a change in climate
a)  A strong cold front moves through Fargo-Moorhead and the temperature falls by 20 degrees
b)  Last winter was warm, with about 40 inches of snow,  this winter was colder with 55 inches of snow.
c)  In the 1800's, the average annual temperature in Fargo-Moorhead was about 45 degrees.  More recently, it is nearly 46 degrees.
d)  Two 100-year floods of the Red River occured in only 5 years.

3)  Draw an isobar map of a strong winter storm, indicating
     a)  wind direction in one location, and
     b) show where there are distinctly higher wind speeds.

4)  Cite two lines of evidence suggesting that there was once a glacial lake in the Red River Valley.  Cite one line of evidence that there was once a glacier in the valley before the lake was here.

Example Test Questions for Application Part

1)  One winter day, you notice that the wind is in the east (blowing from east to west).  In what direction is the low from you, and what future weather might you expect?
a)  low is to the west, expect warming weather
b)  low is to the south, expect stormy weather
c)  low is to the east, expect stormy weather
d)  low is to the north, expect warming weather

2)  Consider 2 days, both with fog.  Temperature the first day is 20 degrees F, temperature the second day is 40 degrees F.

    On day 1, there is _____________ (more, less, same) water in the air, compared to day 2.
    On day 1, the relative humidity is ______________ (more, less, same), compared to day 2.

3)  "Greenhouse warming" and the "Ozone Problem" both involve absorption of energy, but otherwise refer to separate environmental concerns.  In two sentences, expand on this.

4) Suppose that somehow the Earth cooled and glaciers started to form at the poles. One effect of this might be
a) A compensating warming trend because there will be more sunlight on Earth
b) A compensating warming trend because more of the sunlight will be reflected into the atmosphere
c) Further cooling because more of the sunlight will be reflected back into space
d) Further cooling because ice is cold and will cool the Earth
 

Answers:

1)
Winds in the east indicate a low to the south (ignoring friction as we have done throughout) as shown in the diagram below.  Since strong storms often track to the northeast, this will bring the stormiest northwest quadrant of the storm over your location, bringing a chance of stormy weather.  Although there is no universal "always right" prediction based on an east wind, the best answer is
B:  Low to south, expect stormy weather

2)
Because there is fog both days, we can conclude that the air is saturated with moisture, and that the relative humidity is 100% on each day.  Thus the answer to the second part is "same".  Because air can hold more water dissolved in it when its temperature is higher, and both days have all the water in the air that they can hold, the second day, with its higher temperature, has more water dissolved in the air.  The answer to the first part is "less".

3)
weak or wrong answers:
Energy is absorbed by both ozone and greenhouse gases, but these are two different problems.
        ( weak because it simply restates the premise of the question)
Greenhouse gases change climate by warming it up, ozone gases change climate by cooling it off.
        (this answer is both too vague, and mostly wrong.  It does not correctly clarify the differences between ozone and greenhouse concerns)

Strong answer:
    Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs solar UV radiation, whereas greenhouse gases in the troposphere absorb infrared radiation coming from Earth.  Loss of ozone results in damaging UV radiation reaching Earth whereas greenhouse gases cause more energy to be retained in Earth's atmosphere possibly causing an increase in global temperature.

This answer is strong because it describes where each absorption is occurring, the kind of energy absorbed, the source of the absorbed energy, and the consequences of the absorption or loss of absorption on our environment.
 

  Home Page (est.htm)    Previous Page (est4.htm)