Weather is a by-product of an atmosphere. It is categorized by being hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. The weather formation is occurs in the lowest level of atmosphere called as troposphere. Weather is a condition that refers to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity.
People are often confused between the terms ‘weather’ and ‘climate’. Weather generally refers to temperature and precipitation whereas climate refers to averaging of atmospheric conditions over longer period of time.
The factors that affect the weather of a place include air pressure, temperature and moisture differences. These differences occur due to sun’s angle that varies with the latitude.
Causes of weather formation
The most common weather phenomenon on earth are wind, cloud, rain, snow, fog and dust storms. Natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons and ice storms are called as extreme weather.
Primarily weather occurs due to air pressure, temperature and moisture differences between one place to another. To understand weather in simpler manner consider an example that the farther is the sun from an area or lower the angle of the sun, cooler will be the place as the spread of the sunlight over a greater surface. This is the reason why there is a strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical areas. Weather conditions such as monsoons or thunderstorms are caused by a totally different process.
Earth’s axis plays an important role in weather formation. Due to the angular position of the axis of earth, every set of months have a different weather. For example, northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun. As a result sunlight falls more directly on that spot than December. This effect eventually causes seasons that last for a couple of months and change as the axis of the earth changes its angle.
The amount of solar energy Earth absorbs also depends on the weather. The uneven solar heating is also caused due to weather (in the form of cloudiness and precipitation that is). This is the reason why higher altitudes are cooler than the lower altitudes. An inverse effect can cause a higher altitude to be warmer than the lower belt which is inverse in the usual case.
