South Georgia

I mentioned South Georgia, and in particular the two fab webcams the other day... As well as penguin-watching, it is interesting to see how the view changes throughout the year.

Not many penguins about yet today, but plenty of seals - and a ship!

Looking a bit more carefully at the South Georgia website though, I've just discovered a set of Visitor Management Plans - these have routes for visitors to follow, give warnings for visitors about potential dangers, outline the known impacts of visitors on the flora and fauna, and describe the code of conduct for visitors. Click here to access the plans (links on the left-hand-side). Have a look at the Information for Visitors as well...

Climatic Hazards and Change...

Start of a new unit today...

For those of you whose copies of the spec have mysteriously disappeared from your folders, a reminder that you can download it from the AQA website - pages 19-20 are the ones you need for the content of the physical part of the AS course.

We talked about the definitions of weather (atmospheric conditions on a short-term basis) and climate (average weather conditions over an extended period of time) - make sure that you are clear about the difference between the two - and extreme weather events (tropical revolving storms, tornadoes, floods, storm surges, etc.).

We also had a look at the ways in which weather and climate affect our lives - economically, socially, environmentally...

Finally, we started to look at the vertical stratification of the atmosphere:

http://www.visionlearning.com/

It is well worth you having look at The Atmosphere on the Met Office website - lots of other useful bits and pieces on there as well.

River Regimes

On Wednesday last week, we talked about River Regimes...

A river regime basically shows variations in river discharge over time. We looked at the short-term, medium-term and long-term reasons why discharge might vary temporally (i.e. over time), for example, in the short term, glacial melt would cause an increase in river discharge.

We also thought about how river regimes might be expected to vary spatially (from one place to another), largely as a result of variations in climate. You compared 4 different river regimes - a river fed by a Canadian glacier, a river in Portugal, the River Thames, and the River Congo.

There's a very good set of notes on the Wycombe High School site about River Regimes... well worth you having a look!