Earth & Space Ladder · High school · Grade 10
Weather and Climate
Why air moves and rain falls: sunlight and Earth's energy balance, humidity and clouds, pressure and wind, fronts and storms, forecasting, and how the climate works and changes.
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Unit 1 The Air Around Us
3 topics
Air pressure and how it falls with height, and the gas law that ties pressure, temperature and density together.
Unit 2 Sunlight and Earth's Energy
8 topics
How sunlight arrives and how much is reflected, why warm things glow, Earth's energy balance, and how water stores energy.
Unit 3 Water Vapor
3 topics
When air is saturated, how relative humidity and dew point measure water vapor, and which one tells you how much is there.
Unit 4 Rising Air and Stability
6 topics
Why rising air cools, where clouds form, how condensation changes the cooling rate, and when air keeps rising on its own.
Unit 5 Clouds and Precipitation
3 topics
Naming clouds, how tiny droplets grow into raindrops and snowflakes, and what decides rain, snow, sleet or freezing rain.
Unit 6 Pressure and Wind
4 topics
The forces that push and turn the wind, and why winds spiral around highs and lows.
Unit 7 The Global Circulation
3 topics
Belts of rising and sinking air, the jet stream, and how the Pacific Ocean and the air together make El Niño and La Niña.
Unit 8 Air Masses, Fronts and Weather Maps
6 topics
How fronts change the weather as they pass, how storms of the middle latitudes grow, and how to read a weather map.
Unit 9 Storms
5 topics
Thunderstorms, lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes: what powers them and how they are rated.
Unit 10 Observing and Forecasting
4 topics
How weather is measured, what radar and satellites show, and how computer forecasts and forecast probabilities work.
Unit 11 Climate and Climate Zones
3 topics
Thirty-year averages and anomalies, reading climographs, and sorting the world's climates into zones.
Unit 12 The Carbon Cycle and Climate Change
10 topics
How carbon moves, what pushes climate warmer or cooler, feedbacks, past climates, and the evidence and projections for today's warming.