English for Geographers

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regions, appears to confirm this principle. The rate of decrease, 3.5°F/1000 ft (6.4°C/1000 m), has been long known and is referred to as the environmental lapse rate (sometimes the normal lapse rate). But when balloons carrying recording thermometers were sent higher than the highest mountains, they brought back some amazing data. At a height of 8.25 to 9 miles (13 to 14 km) temperatures stopped declining and, after briefly holding steady, they actually began to rise. At first, no one believed that this was actually the case. But eventually the fact was established: beyond about 9 miles (14 km) above sea level, where the temperature has dropped to about -76°F (-60°C), the mercury rises slowly until at about 30 miles (50 km) above sea level, it is back up to

32°F(0°C).

Fig. 5.Air near the equator is on the average much warmer than air near the poles because the sun's vertical rays at the equator are more effective in heating the surface than the slanting rays of polar regions

3.Answer the following questions:

1.What is atmosphere?

2.What is the chemical composition of the atmosphere?

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3.Why is carbon dioxide very important?

4.What are climate scientists concerned with?

5.What are non-variant gases?

6.What are variant gases?

7.What is the function of water vapour in the atmosphere?

8.What is the function of ozone?

9.What is environmental lapse rate?

4.Put questions to the following statements:

1.The atmosphere is the gaseous layer that lies upon the liquid hydrosphere and the solid crust.

2.The atmosphere of the earth consists of a mixture of gases that includes nitrogen, oxygen, and argon.

3.Climate scientists are concerned that a delicate balance of nature is being upset with consequences that could be serious.

4.Like the other spheres of our multi-layered earth, the atmosphere consists of several distinct layers.

5.At a height of 8.25 to 9 miles (13 to 14 km) temperatures stopped declining and, after briefly holding steady, they actually began to rise.

5.Fill in the correct words from the list below:

wrapped, hostile, support, layer, orange, fierce, photosynthesis, breathe, merges, hold, band, store.

The Earth is ……… in a blanket of gases called the atmosphere. This thin ……… protects the Earth from the Sun’s ……… rays and from the

………conditions of outer space. There are five layers in the Earth’s atmosphere before the air ……... with outer space. The layers ……… air and water vapour that ……… life, and our weather and climate. The Earth’s atmosphere is actually a thin ……… around the earth. If the earth were an

………, the atmosphere would be as thin as the skin of the orange. A vast ……... .Of oxygen exists in oceans, rocks, and the atmosphere. Oxygen created by plant ……… .Balances oxygen used up when animals ……… .

6. Match the word with its explanation:

English For Geographers_____________________________________________

Section 2

1.Look at these questions:

a)What is the main task of the atmosphere?

b)What is the difference between weather and climate?

Read the passage through and find the answers to the questions. Remember, you do not have to understand every word to answer them.

The Dynamic Atmosphere

The science of meteorology is concerned with what may be thought of as a vast, automatic air-conditioning system. Our spinning planet is heated strongly at the equator, feebly at the poles, and its moisture is concentrated in the great ocean basins. It is the task of the atmosphere, from our point of view, to redistribute this heat and moisture so that large areas of the land surface will be habitable. Air conditioning by the atmosphere is far from

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perfect; it fails miserably in desert regions, on mountain summits, in far northern and southern latitudes. On sultry nights in midsummer or on bitter January mornings we may question its efficiency even in our favoured part of the world. But the atmosphere does succeed in making a surprisingly large amount of the earth’s surface fit for human habitation.

The two chief functions of any air-conditioning system are the regulation of air temperature and humidity. In addition to these, we expect the atmosphere to perform a third function: it must provide us at intervals with rain or snow. The weather and climate of a given locality describe how effectively these functions are performed. Weather refers to the temperature,

a description of climate is the variability of temperature and rainfall with the seasons; an outstanding feature of the climate of North Dakota is its extreme warmth in summer and extreme cold in winter, whereas the climate of southern California is characterised by equable year-round temperatures and by a concentration of rainfall in the winter months. Local barometric pressures and the intensity and direction of wind may be important in descriptions of weather and climate.

2.Put questions to the following statements:

1.The science of meteorology is concerned with an automatic airconditioning system.

2.Our spinning planet is heated strongly at the equator, feebly at the poles, and its moisture is concentrated in the great ocean basins.

3.Air conditioning by the atmosphere it fails miserably in desert regions, on mountain summits, in far northern and southern latitudes.

4.Local barometric pressures and the intensity and direction of wind may be important in descriptions of weather and climate.

3.Look at the first paragraph and say which words have the opposite meaning to:

very small strongly well/happily very hot

4.Look at paragraph 3 and say which words you could replace with: place

changeability

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very great

5. Match the word with its explanation:

6. Insert the missing letters:

midsu……er, e…uabl…, clo…dine…s, ba…omet…ic, …oca…ity, descri- …t…ons, f……bly, ha…ita…le,d...se...t, re…istri…ute, su…its, mise- …abl…, rainfa......, cond…t…ons, h…mi…ity, v…st, …ir, conditi…ning, ad…itio…, spi……ing.

7. Fill in the spaces with correct form of the word given, where these exist:

Weather conditions

Look at this list of common weather words. Notice that it is very common to form adjective by adding “-y”.

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NOTE!

When it rains for a short period of time, we call it a shower, e.g. We had several showers yesterday afternoon.

When it is raining a lot we often say it’s pouring or it’s pouring with rain. This phrase is much more common than “it’s raining cats and dogs”.

Temperature

Boiling> hot> warm> not very warm> cold (also chilly)> freezing (=very cold)

People round the world have different ideas about temperature:

50C (five degrees Centigrade) is freezing for many Brazilians. -100C (minus ten degrees or ten degrees below zero) is very cold but quite normal in the mountains in Switzerland during the winter when it usually snows a lot. 30-350C is boiling for England and very unusual, but it is very common in parts of Spain during the summer.

Wind

The first word here is very gentle, the last is more than 100 km per hour and can be very dangerous.

A breeze> a wind > a strong wind> a gale > a hurricane

It was a hot day but there was a lovely breeze. The wind blew my hat off.

The hurricane in Florida destroyed trees and buildings.

Thunderstorms

A spell (=period) of very hot weather often ends with a thunderstorm. First it becomes very humid (=hot and wet), then you get thunder and lightning, and finally, very heavy rain (=it pours with rain). Afterwards, it is usually cooler and it feels fresher.

8. True or false? If a sentence is false, write a true sentence about the weather conditions in the sentence:

1. It often pours with rain in the desert.

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2.It gets quite chilly in the desert in the evening.

3.Thunder makes a noise.

4.Lightning can kill people.

5.A shower is a gentle breeze.

6.A spell of hot weather may end in a thunderstorm.

7.If it is humid, the air will be very dry.

8.Below zero, water turns to ice.

9.Heavy rain means that it is pouring with rain.

10.When it is foggy you need sunglasses.

9. Complete the text with suitable words:

The single greatest influence on Japanese weather is the wind. During the summer it ……... from the pacific, causing ……… and humid weather, but in winter, the north-westerly ……… from Siberia are very cold and it

……… heavily on the mountains of the north west. The south-eastern parts receive cold dry air. Between June and mid July, there is a ……… of wet weather when the rice fields get the water vital for growth. After that, there is less ……... rain, but the air is still ……… . Autumn, however, is drier, and usually very pleasant.

Read and translate the text using the explanation below:

Cold weather

In Scandinavia, the chilly (1) days of autumn soon change to the cold days of winter. The first frosts (2) arrive and the roads become icy. Rain becomes sleet (3) and then snow, at first turning to slush (4) in the streets, but soon settling (5) with severe blizzards (6) and snowdrifts (7) in the far north. Freezing weather often continues in the far north until May or even June, when the ground starts to thaw (8) and the ice melts (9) again.

(1) cold, but not very, (2) thin white coat of ice on everything (3) rain and snow mixed (4) dirty, brownish, half-snow, half-water, (5) staying as a white covering, (6) snow blown by high winds, (7) deep banks of snow against walls, etc., (8) change from hard, frozen state to normal, (9) change from solid to liquid under heat.

Unit 7

Section 1

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1. Learn the following words and their translations. Check up yourself by

2. Read and translate the following text using a dictionary:

The Hydrologic Cycle

The water of the oceans and the air of the atmosphere combine to deliver enormous quantities of moisture to the landmasses in an unceasing system called the hydrologic cycle. The hydrologic cycle could not take place if water could not change from the liquid state to the vapour state and back again to the liquid state (and even, as ice, to the solid state). When the surface of the ocean is in contact with an air mass, evaporation takes place, and water in the vapour state becomes part of the atmosphere. Evaporation rates are higher where temperatures are high, and warm air can contain much more moisture than cold air can, so that air masses in equatorial zones are typically humid, whereas polar air masses are dry. Once the water vapour has entered the air mass and the air continues its movement in the trades, westerlies, or some other pressure system, it may reach a landmass and overspread it. By various processes the moisture in the air now condenses and falls on the land as precipitation. On reaching the land surface, some of this precipitation evaporates back into the air again–from the leaves of vegetation, from the soil, and from the surfaces of lakes and rivers. Part of it seeps into the soil to become ground water, but much of this eventually drains into lakes and streams and even back into the ocean itself. And part of the precipitation becomes runoff, flowing directly into streams that carry it back to the ocean as well. As the water drains back into the ocean it mixes with the passing current, and eventually it may evaporate back into the air again. Then the whole circulation system is renewed.

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In this way the hydrologic cycle serves as a giant, worldwide pumping system that brings life-giving water to even the deepest interiors of the continents.

The hydrologic cycle is a global system, and it is difficult to measure its components. When climate scientists began to record precipitation, humidity (moisture in the air), seepage in soils, runoff in streams, evaporation, and other measurable processes in various areas on land and sea, they made an important discovery: some areas have what may be called a water surplus, others have a deficit. This in itself is not surprising – the landscape and vegetation give strong indications of this. But what was surprising was that large areas that would seem to have a surplus actually do not or have it only seasonally. This gave rise to the concept of water balance, the annual (or seasonal) water budget of a locale.

Equatorial zones are best supplied with water and have a favourable water balance. But moving north and south from the equatorial zone into the tropics, we find large areas between 10° and 40° latitude that have a negative balance – and not just desert areas.

3.Answer the following questions:

1.What is the hydrologic cycle?

2.What is a necessary condition for hydrologic cycle to happen?

3.When does evaporation take place?

4.Where are evaporation rates higher?

5.What happens with precipitation when it reaches the land surface?

6.What is the function of hydrologic cycle?

7.What important discovery did climate scientists make?

8.What zones are best supplied with water?

4.Put questions to the following statements:

1.The water of the oceans and the air of the atmosphere combine to deliver enormous quantities of moisture to the landmasses.

2.The hydrologic cycle could not take place if water could not change from the liquid state to the vapour state and back again to the liquid state and even to the solid state.

3.Air masses in equatorial zones are typically humid.

4.Equatorial zones are best supplied with water and have a favourable water balance.

5.The hydrologic cycle serves as a giant, worldwide pumping system that brings life-giving water to even the deepest interiors of the continents.

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5. Insert the missing letters:

…vaporatio…, we…terl…es, …eg…tation, la…i…ude, p…eci…itation, in…erior…, s……page, mea…ura…le, an…ua…, …udge…, c…rr…nt, e…orm…us, con…en…e, equ…tori…l, scien…is…s, unc……sing, s…re…ms, ru…o…f, hu…idi…y, disco…ery, atom…phe…e, o…erspre…d.

6. Fill in the correct words from the list below:

rises, severe, moisture, passes, circulates, droplets, level, smoke, fuels, blown, cools, fog.

Clouds

Air …… as it warms, as it ……… over mountains, or when it is

………upwards by cool air. Rising air ……… condenses, and forms clouds of water ……… There are three cloud levels: cirrus form at the highest level, alto in the middle, and stratus at the lowest ……… Clouds that form at ground level are known as ……… Fog, mixed with smoke from burning

………produce smog. Earlier this century, London, England suffered from

………smog.

Cloud formation

1. The land warms. The Sun warms the land on a clear day. Air near the ground is warmed and rises.

2. A cloud is formed. As the warm air rises, it cools. The moisture it contains condenses and forms a cloud.

3. Growing clouds. Fleecy clouds appear in the sky. They get bigger and cool air circulates inside them.

4.

Cloud types:

Cirrus – wisps of cloud made of ice crystals, about 12,000 m high. Cirrocumulus – forms at about 9,000 m, rippled ice crystal cloud. Cumulonimbus – dark, storm cloud with rain.

Altocumulus – layers or rolls of fluffy cloud.

Altostratus – grey or white sheet of cloud forms between 2,000 m and 6,000 m. Stratocumulus – layer at the top of cumulus cloud.

Cumulus – large, white, heaped, fluffy cloud. Nimbostratus – low, rain cloud under 2,000 m.

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