I understand that climate is affected by the position of the Earth hence wind patterns, and weather can be highly variable. But I noticed that the weather can also show consistent per day patterns. For example, it’s sunny in the morning but rainy in the afternoon. How does that happen?
In: Earth Science
Moisture evaporates throughout the day as the sun heats the earth, and falls when enough has accumulated, especially when the wind blows in from a large body of water
So it depends heavily on each individual weather pattern that your referencing. Each one happens for different reasons, and they can happen for different reasons depending on the local geography.
In the case you’ve listed of it typically being sunny in the morning and dry in the afternoon, that’s a fairly common phenomenon in areas relatively close to large bodies of water. It happens because land and water absorb heat from the Sun at different rates.
During the night the land is generally cooler than the ocean which causes a breeze to flow from the land to the ocean, pushing moisture away from the land out to sea. With no air moisture over the land you have no clouds which is a sunny day. During the day this reverses. The land heats up until it’s hotter than the ocean which induces a breeze from the ocean towards the land. This pushes moisture from the ocean onto the land causing a rainy afternoon.
Latest Answers