Wheater

Weather
by Mike Rayner It's hardly surprising that weather is a favourite topic for so many people around the world - it affects where we choose to live, what we wear, our moods, and perhaps evenour national characteristics. A sunny day can relieve the deepest depression, while extreme weather can destroy homes and threaten lives.

The effects of weather
Palm trees bent double in hurricaneforce winds, cars stranded in snow drifts, people navigating small boats down flooded city streets – images we are all familiar with from news reports of severe weather spells. But many of the effectsof the weather are less newsworthy. ‘I’m feeling a bit under the weather’ is a common complaint in Britain, especially on Monday mornings, and it seems that weather really can be responsible formoods. Studies have shown that changeable weather can make it hard to concentrate, cloudy skies slow down reflexes, and high humidity with hot, dry winds makes many people irritable and snappy. Somesuggest that the weather also leaves its mark on character, giving people from the same region similar temperaments, although it seems that economic, political and social factors are likely to have a muchstronger effect than the weather.

What causes changes in the weather?
If you live in a place like Britain, where the weather seems to change daily if not hourly, you could be forgiven for thinkingthat the weather is random. In fact the weather is controlled by systems which move around areas of the globe. In the UK the weather depends on depressions, often called ‘lows’, and anticyclones, alsoknown as ‘highs’. These systems start in the Atlantic Ocean, and make their way across the British Isles from the west to the east. Highs bring sunny weather, while lows bring rain and wind. Theweather systems in tropical climates are very different from those in mid and high latitudes. Tropical storms develop from depressions, and often build into cyclones, violent storms featuring hurricanes...