Geography Quiz: Atmosphere and Winds

Ozone is concentrated in the lower and middle stratosphere, and because it absorbs ultraviolet radiation the temperature of this layer rises with height instead of falling.

This is the average rate at which air temperature falls as one rises through the troposphere, and it explains why hill stations are cooler than the plains and why high peaks carry snow even in the tropics.

Although the air there is thin, it is dense enough to heat a body moving at cosmic speed by friction, so most meteors glow and are destroyed in this layer and are seen from the ground as shooting stars.

It is comparatively inert, so it dilutes oxygen and slows combustion, and it enters living things mainly through the nitrogen cycle in which bacteria fix it in a usable form.

The wind is the Chinook. It descends the leeward slope, is compressed and warmed as it sinks, and can raise the temperature sharply in a few hours; it melts or evaporates the snow cover, which is why herders call it the snow eater and why it is valued for exposing…

It is a strong, hot and dry wind that blows during the day over the plains of north India and Pakistan in the peak of summer, raising temperatures sharply and causing heat stroke, and it dies down after sunset.

It states the deflection produced by the rotation of the earth, the Coriolis effect, which turns every freely moving body to the right of its path in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern.

It is a cold, dry and often violent wind that blows from the north down the Rhone valley of southern France to the Gulf of Lion, chilling the coast and damaging crops, which is why orchards there are protected by lines of trees and walls.

Strong heating at the equator makes the air expand and rise, so surface pressure is low and horizontal winds are weak; sailing ships were often becalmed there.

In summer, as the subtropical westerly jet withdraws to the north of the plateau of Tibet, an easterly jet stream forms in the upper air over peninsular India and blows from east to west.