This resource provides images, a graph, a summary, a video, review questions, and adaptive practice questions about the effects of altitude and mountains on climate conditions.
Students will learn about how altitude and temperature are correlated and how mountains create specific weather patterns.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The adaptive practice questions provide a self-assessment tool for students to check their understanding.
The video highlights weather patterns created by mountains and the prevailing winds in the Northwest and Southwest U.S.
Additional Prerequisites
Students and teachers will need to sign in to use some of the interactive features.
Each student will need to have access to a computer and the internet for the interactive self-assessment questions.
Differentiation
This could be used for virtual learning, homework, or an in-class assignment.
Geography students could look at maps of mountain ranges all over the globe and check the biomes present on either side to determine to direction of the prevailing winds in each area.
Science classes could discuss the potential effects of a wavier jet stream that holds weather systems in place longer on both sides of mountain ranges and how this is connected to global warming and climate change.
Orographic lifting influences the climate of a place. Movement of air masses by wind cause distinct climatic features at the windward and leeward side of mountains and other landforms. The resource describes variability in climate as a result of altitudinal changes. This is recommended.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS2: Earth’s Systems
MS-ESS2-5 Collect data to provide evidence for how the motions and complex interactions of air masses result in changes in weather conditions.
