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Your assignment for this week is to read chapter five and review the Prezi http://schmidtphysicalgeography.wikispaces.com/Ch+5 and to read chapter six and review the Prezi here: https://schmidtphysicalgeography.wikispaces.com/Ch+6 You have quizzes on Blackboard for both chapters, and you have a posting assignment for both chapters too. Your posting assignment is located here: http://schmidtphysicalgeography.wikispaces.com/Week+Four+14+week at the bottom of the page.

There is a lot of supplemental material on the chapter five page. Mostly it is related to El Nino, but there is also another Prezi towards the bottom of the page on the Santa Ana Winds. You would be surprised to see how much we are locally connected to this chapter. I linked the aerosol video on this page again (it was first in chapter three) so that once you know where the wind belts are, you will understand it differently.

Draw the Global Wind Belts

The link above will take you to a page where you can see how to draw the global wind belts step by step. You do not have to do this, but I always have my onsite students do this, and I do believe that there is something to be said for the tactile element to drawing the wind belts. This chapter is very important for understanding future chapters. Once you learn the wind belts, it helps everything else to fall into place.

Earth Winds Map:[|http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-158.97,36.04,828]

This is a web site that I like to pull up in class so that you can see what the winds actually look like right now. This February has been unusually dry and warm, especially for the super El Nino that we are supposed to be having. Everything is about to change though, and if you take a look at the wind map, you will see there is a lot of activity in the Pacific! And it’s headed our way… In a normal year, you would see the winds look very much like the way we learn them in this chapter. Everything is weird right now because of the El Nino. This web site is also a good example of remote sensing – from chapter two – because it uses data from our satellites to make the map you see. You can zoom in and out and you can drag the map all around the world too. I love to play with this wind map, hope you enjoy it too. It may take a minute to load because it is working with a lot of data, but if I am patient with it, I can even look at it on my tablet.

You may also enjoy this: [] which is El Nino and La Nino years of the past in a list, but under the list in a nice graphic! The graphic shows what we call the Nino index, so you can see how the temperature changes in previous years back and forth between El Nino and La Nina. We were off the chart for this year in case you were wondering; the graphic was created before the El Nino hit is strongest point.

I have a short article on the page about March of 1991 – which was a pretty strong El Nino year. I lived in Lake Tahoe at the time and California was experiencing its worst drought ever at the time. The drought had lasted five years, but when March of 1991 rolled in, it rained or snowed EVERY DAY that March and brought us out of a five year drought in one month. If you have heard people saying we need another Miracle March, that’s what they are talking about. I hope we get one. El Nino is fascinating to me. We don’t understand it yet, don’t know what turns it on or off, and only started studying it after the very strong El Nino of 1982/83. I remember that one too and had some strange experiences as a child in that one – one of which was going to the beach on the day that all of the red crabs beached themselves – which happened again this summer! I put in an article about that too. El Nino makes everything weird and as the water warms up, all kinds of strange things happen like odd birds, fish, whales, sharks, sea snakes, etc. showing up here, so I have a few articles about that too.

This is one of my favorite chapters to teach in class. I hope that you enjoy it too and that it helps you have a better understanding of how things work right here at home with the winds. I know that this chapter is somewhat complex, so this is your only assignment for the week. If you need any help, have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

What a nice time to start chapter six just after a storm! I like it when Mother Nature helps me explain things. This chapter covers all of the water in the atmosphere. This will be the first time we talk about the water cycle; we will see it again in chapter nine when we learn about all of the water on the planet, and again in chapter ten when we cover all of Earth’s great cycles. I do wish for you to have a good understanding of the water cycle, but I also want you to have a feel for how humans alter the water cycle. So as you are learning the different parts, imagine how we change it…

You will learn about EVAPOTRANSIPRATION, and I hope you will then understand that deforestation alters the water cycle. You will learn about runoff, and I hope that you will think of how we pave our cities and how that changes runoff – so that water cannot filter back into the ground, or how we cement over our streams and what impact that has too. Also imagine what kind of things are in the water because of what it flows through, like the oil and brake dust of the streets or the chemicals that people put on their lawns. Imagine also that much, if not most of our water is imported from other places. Imagine the impact taking the water away from those places has, and then look at the impact we have here using that water to make green lawns, parks, fill swimming pools, etc. I have this talk with all of my students, so I hope that I can put your minds in the right direction for this chapter. Water is so important in California, and this is the first place we get to talk about it.

I have several videos on the page to help with the concepts in this chapter and some I like to show for fun. I hope you will enjoy the Lenticular Clouds video and the Very Scary Clouds video, as well as the video about the Russians cloud seeding. The last mayor of Moscow got himself elected by promising to stop snow in the city. This was done through cloud seeding, which we are actually the pioneers of here in the US.

I do give extra credit for cloud pictures. If you go close to the bottom of this page:http://schmidtphysicalgeography.wikispaces.com/San+Bernardino+Valley+College you will find a Padlet of cloud pictures, 5 points for posting and identifying. I grade these at the end of the semester, so you have until May to post one.

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