An atmosphere mass is a very large body of air having like temperature and moisture subject throughout its pass. While lacking a fixed size, air masses typically cover thousands of square kilometers or miles, sometimes even stretching over the majority of a country or region. Of the four major types of air masses, one in especial tends to influence the weather of the Pacific coast more than the others.
Air Masses: The Facts
Meteorologists broadly divide air masses into four major categories : continental tropical, continental polar, maritime tropical, and nautical polar. occasionally, they may use a one-fifth class, continental arctic, to describe extreme bone-chilling cold. Air masses develop over large areas with flatcar, uniform composition, such as oceans or huge plains, and take on the temperature and humidity characteristics of those regions. Air masses forming over state are dry, while those developing over oceans are more humid. similarly, air masses developing near polar regions contain cold air travel, while those near tropical regions contain warm publicize. Air masses don ’ metric ton remain hovering over the area in which they developed ; they migrate to other areas, propelled by the atmospheric forces. As they move, they take on characteristics of their raw environment—for exemplify, a polar air mass becomes warmer the far south it travels.
Maritime Polar
Maritime polar air out masses, abbreviated military policeman on weather maps, tend to dominate the Pacific coast region. These air masses form over a cold ocean stream in the northerly Pacific Ocean. Although military policeman air masses originate at north wind latitudes, they do not feature as cold of atmosphere as continental polar publicize masses. The prevailing westerly winds carry them eastbound to the Pacific coastline, where they deliver relatively damp, cool air. As maritime polar air masses move south and inland, they interact with the dry, warmer air already in position, modifying their impingement. Maritime polar air out masses have the capability to produce cloudy, damp, or bleary conditions, with fog more likely near the shoreline.
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Additional Significant Air Masses
The southerly share of the Pacific coast—particularly southerly California—can be influenced by maritime tropical air masses, abbreviated machine translation. These warm, damp tune masses originate in the subtropical Pacific Ocean. They may bring daze or low clouds with them. Thanks to the predominate westerlies, continental air masses about never influence the weather on the Pacific Coast. On rare occasions, however, if the fart blows from the southeast, dry continental tropical atmosphere may make its room from Mexico to southern California ’ s Pacific coast.
Geographic Influences
The mountains lining the Pacific slide causal agent the region to experience identical different weather than interior regions of the West. When maritime air out masses travel inland, the air is forced upward over coastal batch ranges, where it produces precipitation, hence losing its moisture content and taking on characteristics more distinctive of continental vent masses. sometimes, this change is apparent in barely a few brusque miles, depending on the proximity of the mountains to the ocean. The coastal ranges basically comprise a geographic barrier, which explains why the weather of areas nestled along the Pacific seashore normally differs so greatly from the weather of areas east of the mountains.