8.1   Air Masses
Channel: Dr. No Knows Weather
Date: 2019-07-08

This video is part of the book: https://tophat.com/marketplace/science-&-math/earth-sciences/full-course/weather-climate-and-beyond-an-introduction-to-physical-geography-third-edition-ricardo-nogueira-erik-johanson-frederick-chambers/3477/
Topics discussed in this video 1


Air Masses affecting North America

Maritime Tropical
Maritime Polar
Continental Arctic
 Continental Tropical
Air Mass Modification

Is it going to rain or will it be a sunny day?

How often do we have this conversation? Weather affects our lives more than we realize, directly or indirectly. Several historical events were affected by weather: (source : The Farmers Almanac)

 In 1588, severe weather defeated the Spanish Armada and propelled England to become the world's dominant power for the next three centuries.
 In 1776, fog kept the American revolution alive, allowing George Washington to move his troops without the British army noticing, otherwise it would have been the end of the American revolution. 
In 1812, Napoleon was defeated by the Russian winter-- it was the beginning of the end of his empire.
In 1944, the most important weather-related event of World War II happened on D-Day, where the allied meteorologist forecasted a break in the weather conditions on June 6 allowing the invasion.
These are some examples of how the weather has been playing an important role in human history.  From 650 BC when the Babylonians learned to predict the weather from cloud patterns, up until now when supercomputers analyze hundreds of thousands of PFLOPS (1015 floating point operations per seconds). Even with all the technology, we cannot forecast the exact time rain will stop.