In this activity you will form groups, conduct research into winds and surface currents, and report back to your lab section in the form of a presentation. At the end of this activity you will find suggestions for the format of the presentation. You will use the data you investigate as evidence for your statements. Please use these suggestions and the “How to make a class presentation” (Resource 1) as guidelines for your presentation.
Overview:In preparation for this mini-study, you should be sure that you understand how the uneven heating of the Earth, from the Sun, and the Coriolis effect combine to produce the "ideal" global circulation pattern that consists of three circulation cells in the Northern hemisphere and three circulation cells in the Southern hemisphere. The wind pattern is similar, but differs from the ":ideal" pattern because of the continents and variations in the sea surface temperature from the ideal. You should also review the Eckman Spiral, which explains how winds drive the surface ocean currents. This will help explain not only the major ocean currents, but why upwelling occurs in some locations.
Key processes and concepts to review before beginning:
Resources:
After completing this investigation you should be able to:
You can go straight into exploring the data, but if you need more background information about winds and surface currents, please review the websites that provide background information (found after the data section).
Atmospheric
Circulation Data: This site <JPL
Winds Report>shows an
animation of the wind patterns for last five days! Click on the Animations
link at the left of the page. 
Don't
miss the special attraction section. You will definitely want to look
at the animations. Be sure to check out the source information for the data.
Below (Figure 1) is a screen capture from one of the animations. On
the "Quickscat" web
page, you can control the speed and direction of the animation by sliding
the control at the bottom of the screen from left to right.
Figure 1: A screen capture from JPL's QuikScat Daily Wind Report Homepage. •
The Cloud overlays are also very interesting. Click on the Cloud overlays link on the animations page of the JPL Winds site.
In viewing these data, you should look at the archives of the 10 day averages. Ask yourself if there is a relationship between time of year, winds speed, wave height, and water vapor content of the atmosphere. Can you explain any of these observations with the idealized global circulation model in the textbook?
Monthly Averaged Wind Data:You can access monthly wind data from the Lamont climate data site. The data spans the time January 1960 to a few months prior to the present month. Go to this site and plot an animation of this year's monthly averaged winds from summer to the last month for which data are available.
Climatological Data:Because the winds vary from day to day and year to year, it is often difficult to see the overall average pattern that persists in spite of these variations. To average out these variations, data must be averaged over many years. For example, the climatological wind data displayed by the Lamont data server averages wind for each of the 12 months over the years between 1970 and 2000.
Ocean Circulation Overview: The link below will provide you with some overview information.
http://earth.usc.edu/~stott/Catalina/Oceans.html
You should be able to answer the following questions after reading this material.
Ocean Circulation Data<Ocean Drifter Buoy Animations> : Buoys <diagram, photo> are set adrift in the ocean, and their position is determined from a built-in GPS system and relayed to the data center by satellite. Look at the North Atlantic and South Atlantic animations. A clearer display of the drifter buoy data is shown at the "drifter derived climatology of tropical Atlantic circulation" page.
Real time equatorial surface current measurements can be displayed at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) OSCAR site (click on the "Data Display & Download" button near the top of the screen). The area of study concentrates on the equatorial Pacific, for purposes of studying the El-Nino phenomenon.
How do the real data compare to the idealized ocean surface circulation graphic from the previous web site or from your textbook?
Background information: Please take some time to learn more about the background information available for the topic of winds and surface currents. If you learn something new and interesting, please share it with the lab in your presentation.
Presentation Framework: Your presentation should include a brief overview explaining the significance of winds and surface currents. You should then choose as many of the following topics as is necessary to explain the concept. Choose topics that you think might be relevant to understanding winds and surface currents. Your presentation should include interesting findings from your investigations, backed up with data. You must use the physical data in your presentation.You may choose from the following list of topics, or investigate a topic of your own. The topics in the list are examples of investigations that could be made using the data available at the URL’s listed above.
Data driven topics:
Overview type topics: