Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional heating. Most precipitation occurs within the tropics and is caused by convection. [3] Precipitation is a major component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the planet.
Typical precipitation types associated with a warm front advancing over frigid air Precipitation in the form of a sunshower. In meteorology, the different types of precipitation often include the character, formation, or phase of the precipitation which is falling to ground level. There are three distinct ways that precipitation can occur.
Geographic distribution of rain is largely governed by climate type, topography and habitat humidity. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where the upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional ...
Precipitation: Condensed water vapor that falls to the Earth's surface. Most precipitation occurs as rain, but also includes snow, hail, fog drip, graupel, and sleet. [14] Approximately 505,000 km 3 (121,000 cu mi) of water falls as precipitation each year, 398,000 km 3 (95,000 cu mi) of it over the oceans.
This causes them to cool down, which causes an excess of moisture to condense into high clouds and results in heavy precipitation over the mountain range. This is known as orographic rainfall and after this process, the air is dry because it has lost most of its moisture over the Atlas Mountains. On the leeward side, the cold, dry air starts to ...
Sleet and freezing rain occur by a similar process, but are different forms of precipitation. Both are most common in the winter. Sleet occurs when snowflakes melt into a raindrop in a wedge of ...
This decreases the air's ability to hold water, and this causes precipitation over the land. This is why summer monsoons cause so much rain over land. In the colder months, the cycle is reversed. Then the land cools faster than the oceans and the air over the land has higher pressure than air over the ocean.
Maximum precipitation generally occurs in late spring and early summer, with minimum precipitation in winter. During La Niña events, the storm track shifts far enough northward to bring wetter than normal conditions (in the form of increased snowfall) to the Midwestern states, as well as hot and dry summers.