IV. CLIMATIC FACTORS
Learning Objectives: In this unit you will learn to forecast the weather through the use of their senses, understand cloud forms, the movement of weather fronts, the affect that different weather systems have on crops, heating and cooling in homes, microclimates, the differences in latitude and altitude on weather patterns, the uses and abuses of modern technology in weather forecasting, and how weather patterns fit into and affect the entire web of life on earth.
1. Classification of broad climatic zones: planting zones
2. Patterning in global weather patterns (engines of the atmosphere): highs and lows, prevailing winds, affects of landscape features on weather patterns, etc.
3. Cloud forms: observe cirrus, stratus, cumulus and nimbus and explain what they foretell
4. Precipitation: how much rainfall is in the area and how does this affect the growing season?
5. Radiation: what is sunlight actually doing when it hits the earth and how does this affect our garden, farm, buildings, city streets, suburban lawns?
6. Wind: exercise on what the wind is telling us and how it moves through the landscape
7. Landscape effects: observe the flow and shape of the land and explain how this would affect the weather patterns in terms of microclimates, planting times, etc.
8. Microclimates
9. Latitude effects: what does latitude and longitude mean in terms of seasonal change, planting schedules, general weather patterns, soils, etc.
10. Weather forecasting (exercises in observation of local weather patterns): exercises using observation of cloud forms (what do these cloud forms tell us about weather systems?), wind and sun direction and folk wisdom (what are some of the folk sayings that depict local weather patterns?)
11. The hydrologic cycle: diagram and describe
12. Putting weather patterns to use: how do we do this?
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