Monday Aug. 22, 2011
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Welcome to ATMO 170A1 - Introduction to Weather and Climate.  This course used to be called NATS 101, there's a good chance I'll keep calling it by that name.

Some Mariachi music seemed like just the thing for the first day of class.  We had time for 3 selections "48 Roses", "Norteno Lights", and "Poverty's King" from Mariachi El Bronx.   For the last couple of years I have been filling the few minutes before class with some kind of music, often local talent.  Music won't ordinarily take up any actual class time.  Hopefully you'll like at least some of the selections.  Comments and ideas from students are welcome.

Today was the first day of class.  We first briefly discussed the Course Information handout.  Please read through that information carefully and let me know if you have any questions.

A textbook is not required for this class.  If you want to get a more complete picture of the subject than we will have time to do in class, you might want to purchase one of the textbooks that are being used in the other NATS 101 sections.  Or if you'd like to borrow one of the copies of introductory level textbooks that I have in my office, you'd be welcome to do so.  Otherwise you should be able to do perfectly well in the class by reading the online notes and any other suggested online sources. 

A set of photocopied ClassNotes (available in the Student Union Bookstore) is required.  You should try to purchase a copy as soon as you can because we will probably be using some of them in class later this week.  If you know someone with photocopied ClassNotes from the Spring 2011 or Fall 2010 classes they should work fine this semester also. 

This class does not yet appear on d2l (though that is something I should probably try to do).

Your grade in this class will depend on your quiz scores, how much extra credit you earn (from optional take home and in class assignments), your writing grade, and (perhaps) your score on the final exam.  A sample grade report from the Spring 2011 Nats 101 class is shown below.



Don't worry about all the details at this point.  Note that this (fictitious) student earned a solid B in the class with a C average on the quizzes and a C on the Final Exam.  A high writing grade and the extra credit points are what that possible.  The student would have ended up with a C otherwise.  So be sure to do the writing.

We next had a look at the Writing Requirements handout.  The first half of your writing grade is an experiment report.  You should be thinking about which of the experiments listed on the handout you would like to do (you only need to do one of the experiments).  I'll probably be bringing a signup sheet to class on  There aren't enough materials for everyone to do the same experiment.  Distribution of the materials for the Experiment #1 will probably begin in class on Friday.  There are Book Report and Scientific Paper Report options for students that absolutely refuse to do an experiment. 

The so-called One Side of One Page (1S1P) reports make up the second part of your writing grade.  Topics will appear periodically on the class webpage during the semester.  You will be allowed to write reports on up to 4 topics.  As you write reports you will earn points (the exact number of points will depend on the topic).  You can earn up to 45 points.  Bonus assignments will also appear during the semester.  You can write as many bonus assignment reports as you want.  They won't allow you to earn more than 45 1S1P pts, but they will get you to the 45 pt. total more quickly.  Please read through the information on the writing requirements handout and let me know if you have any questions.

Here's the first picture of the day, something that will appear occasionally in this class.



This is Sabino Canyon located in NE Tucson.  The creek has been dry most of the summer but the water reappeared last Friday after an impressive thunderstorm on Thursday.  The water was running over the bridges on Friday but had dropped several inches by Sunday.

We did cover a little course material in class today just so you can get an idea of how that will work.  If we were using a textbook it would probably begin with an introductory chapter that described the atmosphere.  Here are some of the topics we'll be looking first in this course.

We'll just have time today to look at the first question, the composition of the atmosphere.  Here are a few questions to get you thinking about the air around you.

Can you smell air?

I don't think you can smell or taste air (air containing nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon and carbon dioxide) unless air pollutants are present.  And I suspect our sense is sensitive enough for us to detect certain air pollutants even when their concentration is very small.

Can you see air?
This is a little more detailed answer to this question than was given in class.  Air is normally clear, transparent, and invisible (that would be true of the air in the classroom).  Sometimes the air looks foggy or hazy.  In these two cases you are seeing the effects of small water droplets or ice crystals (fog) or small particles of dust or smoke (haze).  The particles themselves may be too small to be seen with the naked eye but are visible because they scatter (redirect) light.  Scattering is a pretty important concept and we will learn more about it in a week or two.

The atmosphere isn't actually clear.  When sunlight shines through the atmosphere the sky appears blue.  I didn't mention this in class.  This is a little more complicated form of scattering of sunlight by air molecules.

Can you feel air


It is harder to answer this question.  We're always in contact with air.  Maybe we've grown so accustomed to it we aren't aware of how it feels.  We can certainly feel whether the air is hot or cold, but that have more to do with energy exchange between us and our surroundings.  We will see that air pressure is pressing on every square inch of our bodies with 12 or 13 pounds of force.  If that were to change suddenly I'm pretty sure we'd feel it and it would probably really hurt.

What are the 5 most abundant gases in air?

Let's start with the most abundant gas in the atmosphere.  I poured some of this same material (in liquid form) into a styrofoam cup.  Here's a photo


You can see the liquid, it's clear, it looks like water.  Note the cloud surrounding the cup.  At least one student (probably many more) knew that this was nitrogen.  We'll use liquid nitrogen in several class demonstration this semester.

The liquid nitrogen is evaporating.  Can you see the nitrogen gas?  The answer is no, nitrogen gas is invisible as are most of the other gases in the atmosphere.  The whitish cloud is something else, it's not nitrogen gas.

Nitrogen was discovered in 1772 by  Daniel Rutherford (a Scottish botanist).  Atmospheric nitrogen is relatively unreactive and is sometimes used to replace air in packaged foods to preserve freshness. 

Oxygen is the second most abundant gas in the atmosphere.  Oxygen is the most abundant element (by mass) in the earth's crust, in ocean water, and in the human body.   Here's a photograph of liquid oxygen.  It has a (very faint) blue color (I was pretty disappointed when I saw the picture the first time because I had imagined the liquid oxygen might be a deep vivid blue).

 When heated (such as in an automobile engine) the oxygen and nitrogen in air react to form compounds such as nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and nitrous oxide (N2O).  Together as a group these are called oxides of nitrogen; the first two are air pollutants, the last is a greenhouse gas.  More about those in class in the next day or two.

Here are the 5 most abundant gases in the earth's atmosphere.



Water vapor and argon are the 3rd and 4th most abundant gases in the atmosphere.  The concentration of water vapor can vary from near 0% to as high as 3% or 4%.  Water vapor is, in many locations, the 3rd most abundant gas in air.  In Tucson most of the year, the air is dry enough that argon is in 3rd position and water vapor is 4th.

Water vapor, a gas, is invisible.  Clouds are visible because they are made up of small drops of liquid water or ice crystals.  We can see clouds even though the individual water droplets are too small to be seen because they scatter light.  Water is the only compound that exists naturally in solid, liquid, and gaseous phases in the atmosphere.

Argon is an unreactive noble gas (helium, neon, krypton, xenon, and radon are also inert gases).  Noble gases are often used in "neon signs."

Here's a little more explanation (from Wikipedia) of why noble gases are so unreactive.  Don't worry about all these additional details.  The noble gases have full valence electron shells.  Valence electrons are the outermost electrons of an atom and are normally the only electrons that participate in chemical bonding.   Atoms with full valence electron shells are extremely stable and therefore do not tend to form chemical bonds and have little tendency to gain or lose electrons.

We didn't have time to cover most of the rest of this material in class on Monday.  We'll review it quickly at the start of class on Wednesday.

Water plays an important role in the formation of clouds, storms, and weather.  Meteorologists are very interested in knowing and keeping track of how much water vapor is in the air at a particular place and time.  One of the variables they use is the dew point temperature.  The value of the dew point gives you an idea of how much water vapor is actually in the air.  The higher the dew point value, the more water vapor the higher the water vapor concentration.


The chart below gives a rough equivalence between dew point temperature and percentage concentration of water vapor in the air.


Air temperature will always be equal to or warmer than the dew point temperature.  Experiencing 80o dew points would be very unpleasant (and possibly life threatening because your body might not be able to cool itself).  Click here to see current dew point temperatures across the U.S.  And here's an interesting link I just found concerning unusually high, even record setting dew point temperatures. 

Don't worry about remembering all these numbers.  Just remember that the higher the dew point temperature the more water vapor is in the air and vice versa. 

The second job of the dew point temperature is



We can go back to the cup of liquid nitrogen and see this happening.  We'll concentrate on points 3 and 4 in the class handout.



The cloud came from moisture in the air.  It's not different from the clouds you see forming in the atmosphere outdoors.  The cloud was not made of nitrogen gas (which is invisible).  Note also that a certain amount of "artistic" license was used in the figure above (and in many of my figures); liquid nitrogen is not purple and water clouds are not green. 

Here's a summary of what we've seen happen in class today.


Liquid nitrogen, something you can see, evaporates and turns into invisible nitrogen gas.  Nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere.  Moist air is cooled to its dew point.  Invisible water vapor in the air condenses to form a visible cloud composed of water droplets and ice crystals.