Promise Kept

I promised a while ago that I would write a blog post about "case studies," well here it is....

Case Studies are something we do in Synoptic 1 & 2 and I truly believe that they were created to torment us as students by adding stress, frustration, and anger to our already hectic lives. Before I explain what they are, it would be nice to have a mental picture, so let me save you the trouble of using your brain and provide that mental picture:

There you go....that is a case study map. They are these huge weather maps that we have to analyze and there are 5 maps for each installment and we get two installments each semester.

Each map has different things we have to analyze but before we go into there, there is something that must be said. The atmosphere has several different layers as everybody knows and weather occurs in the Troposphere layer which is right above the surface. In Meteorology we break that layer into different layers of constant pressure. Here are the pressure levels we use starting at the surface and going up in height:

• Surface
• 850 mb [approx. 5,000 feet up]
• 700 mb [approx. 10,000 feet up]
• 500 mb [approx. 18,000 feet up]
• 300 mb [approx. 30,000 feet up]

We get a map for each of these levels and now we will go into what we have to analyze for each level:

Surface:

• Isobars [lines of constant pressure]
• Highs & Lows
• Cold & Warm Fronts
• Areas of precipitation
• Areas of fog, haze, and dust

850 mb:

• Isobars/Isoheights
• Warm & Cold Air Advection - Basically the movement of cold and warm air [that probably didn't explain anything lol]
• Low/High Heights

700 mb:

• Isobars/Isoheights
• Areas of dry and moist air
• Low/High Heights

500 mb:

• Isobars/Isoheights
• Troughs/Ridges
• Areas of positive/negative vorticity
• Low/High Heights

300 mb:

• Isobars/Isoheights
• Wind speeds
• Upper level Jet maximas

You might not know everything I mentioned but the point is that each map requires a lot of shading and takes hours to complete. The entire case study takes days, and are given a full month to complete. You go through a lot of colored pencils and produce a lot of eraser shavings. The teacher is particular in the grading. The isobars have to be straight and not too wavy, there must be no pencil marks, everything has a certain color that you must shade it, etc.

We [the students] don't look forward to these but we have to do them. We get our first installment for this semester on Thursday! Here we go....