Rain, Rain, Go Away!

In the next ‘block’ of posts I’m going to discuss aspects of weather and climate, in particular focusing on the UK. The UK may be the obvious choice, however, it is important that students can relate to a particular topic as such they will all have experience of the British weather. I was swayed to discuss climate next as I have just returned from work and unfortunately endured a soaking on the way.

The climate of the UK is largely influenced by its physical position. The UK lies at the forefront of confrontation between descending polar air from the North and rising sub-tropical weather from the South. As a result we experience varied weather conditions throughout the year. The below image shows the major air flows which circulate Earth.

There are a number of other factors that the climate of the UK. These include:

• The North Atlantic Drift - a warm ocean current that provides the UK with relatively warm winters considering our latitude.
• Prevailing winds - typically flowing in from the south-west, these, along with the North Atlantic Drift result in a warm but wet climate.
• The relief of the UK - as air is forced upwards in upland areas the temperature decreases and clouds form causing subsequent rainfall and hence why the Lake District and the majority of Scotland typically have a large number of rainy days a year. The below diagram is a excellent illustration of how relief rainfall works.

As I have mentioned in my previous posts I believe that before beginning to teach a new topic it is important to have a knowledge of what the students already know. For climate in the UK a possible idea would be to provide a trace of the coastline and then suggest students to shade areas of the UK which they believe to be typically wet in blue, and the warm areas in red. Discussion on why they had chosen those areas would allow the teacher to get a good insight into current understanding.

As a final point I found the Met Office website to be an extremely valuable resource when researching this topic. It contains a huge amount of data available in an instant and even provides basic lesson plans, including presentations and slide shows, which introduce certain topics.