Gorczycas Blog

Year 9 Geo El Nino/La Nina Projects

2011-06-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

1. Complete Work on Time
Edd- Edd has completed all assigned work on time .....barley 3/5
Stuart- All work was completed on time and with enough time for the whole of the group to look over and all agree on it. 4/5
2. Communication

Edd- Edd refused to communicat through the work.He was spending most of his time browsing the Internet looking up pics of pedo bear and yelling absorptivity at Stuart when Stuart and I tell him to do work 1/5

Stuart- Has done brilliant work and has told me what he has been doing and has gotten me to check over the work, and he has sent me the work to make shore i like it. (he is smarter that I so i just say it is brilliant) 5/5

3. Quality of Work
Edd- Edd's quality of work is done very well (only 1 page with the help of Stuart) with the amount if time he had been given to do the work i think he could have done allot more that he has done. 4/5

Stuart- Stuart 's work was the best out of us all. He actual did the work very well with minimum distractions which I cannot say about my self and edd. and the work he did was brilliant and done fast. 5/5

la nina and el nino

2011-06-07T20:53:00.001-07:00

Because El Niño's warm pool feeds thunderstorms above, it creates increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

In South America, the effects of El Niño are direct and stronger than in North America. An El Niño is associated with warm and very wet summers (December-February) along the coasts of northern Peru and Ecuador, causing major flooding whenever the event is strong or extreme. The effects during the months of February, March and April may become critical. Southern Brazil and northern Argentina also experience wetter than normal conditions but mainly during the spring and early summer. Central Chile receives a mild winter with large rainfall, and the Peruvian-Bolivian Altiplano is sometimes exposed to unusual winter snowfall events. Drier and hotter weather occurs in parts of the Amazon River Basin, Colombia and Central America.
Direct effects of El Niño resulting in drier conditions occur in parts of Southeast Asia, increasing forest fires, and northern Australia. Drier than normal conditions are also generally observed in Queensland, inland Victoria, inland New South Wales and eastern Tasmania during June-August.
West of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Ross, Bellingshausen, and Amundsen Sea sectors have more sea ice during El Niño. The latter two and the Weddell Sea also become warmer and have higher atmospheric pressure.
In North America, typically, winters are warmer than normal in the upper Midwest states and Canada, while central and southern California, northwest Mexico and the south eastern U.S., are wetter than normal. Summer is wetter in the intermountain regions of the U.S. The Pacific Northwest states, on the other hand, tend to be drier during an El Niño. During a La Niña, by contrast, the Midwestern U.S. tends to be drier than normal. El Niño is associated with decreased hurricane activity in the Atlantic, especially south of 25º N; this reduction is largely due to stronger wind shear over the tropics.
Finally, East Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania and the White Nile basin, experiences in the long rains from March to May wetter than normal conditions. There also are drier than normal conditions from December to February in south-central Africa, mainly in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana.
Western Hemisphere Warm Pool
Study of climate records has found that about half of the summers after an El Niño have unusual warming in the Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP). This affects weather in the area and seems to be related to the North Atlantic Oscillation.
Atlantic effect
an effect similar to El Niño sometimes takes place in the Atlantic Ocean, where water along equatorial Africa's Gulf of Guinea becomes warmer and eastern Brazil becomes cooler and drier. This may be related to El Niño Walker circulation changes over South America.
Cases of double El Niño events have been linked to severe famines related to the extended failure of monsoon rains, as in the book Late Victorian Holocausts.

Non-climate affects
East Pacific fishing along the west coast of South America; El Niño reduces the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that sustains large fish populations, which in turn sustain abundant sea birds, whose droppings support the fertilizer industry.
The local fishing industry along the affected coastline can suffer during long-lasting El Niño events. The world's largest fishery collapsed due to overfishing during the 1972 El Niño Peruvian anchoveta reduction. During the 1982-83 event, jack mackerel and anchoveta populations were reduced, scallops increased in warmer water, but hake followed cooler water down the continental slope, while shrimp and sardines moved southward so some catches decreased while others increased. Horse mackerel have increased in the region during warm events.
Shifting locations and types of fish due to changing conditions provide challenges forfishing industries. Peruvian sardines have moved during El Niño events to Chilean areas. Other conditions provide further complications, such as the government of Chile in 1991 creating restrictions on the fishing areas for artisanal fishermen and industrial fleets.
The ENSO variability may contribute to the great success of small fast-growing species along the Peruvian coast, as periods of low population removes predators in the area. Similar effects benefit migratory birds which travel each spring from predator-rich tropical areas to distant winter-stressed nesting areas. There is some evidence that El Nino activity is correlated with incidence of red tides off of the Pacific coast of California.
It has been postulated that a strong El Niño led to the demise of the Moche and other pre-Columbian Peruvian cultures.
ENSO and global warming
A few years ago, attribution of recent changes (if any) in ENSO or predictions of future changes were very weak [1]. More recent results (e.g. Collins et al.) tend to suggest that the projected tropical warming may follow a somewhat El-Nino like spatial pattern, without necessarily altering the variability about this pattern
Australia’s climate is highly variable from year to year. For example, 1998 to 2001 were all very wet years across northern and central Australia, with some parts receiving more than double their average rainfall over the four-year period. In contrast, 2002 and early 2003 saw one of the worst droughts in Australia’s history. In eastern Victoria alone, the drought led to approximately 1.2 million hectares of land, including 41 houses and 9000 livestock, being burnt over a span of 59 days starting in January 2003. This was the largest fire event in Victoria since 1939.
Much of the variability in Australia’s climate is connected with the atmospheric phenomenon called the Southern Oscillation, a major see-saw of air pressure and rainfall patterns between the Australian/Indonesian region and the eastern Pacific.

La Niña translates from Spanish as "the girl-child". The term "La Niña" has recently become the conventional meteorological label for the opposite of the better known El Niño.
The term La Niña refers to the extensive cooling of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. In Australia (particularly eastern Australia), La Niña events are associated with increased probability of wetter conditions.
Changes to the atmosphere and ocean circulation during La Niña events include:
Cooler than normal ocean temperatures across the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
Increased convection or cloudiness over tropical Australia, Papua New-Guinea, and Indonesia.
Stronger than normal (easterly) trade winds across the Pacific Ocean (but not necessarily in the Australian region).
High (positive) values of the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index).
A La Niña event is sometimes called an anti-ENSO (anti-El Niño-Southern Oscillation) event.
term what La Niña is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that is the counterpart of El Niño as part of the broader El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern. During a period of Niña, the sea surface temperature across the equatorial Eastern Central Pacific Ocean will be lower than normal by 3–5 °C. In the United States, an episode of La Niña is defined as a period of at least 5 months of La Niña conditions. The name La Niña originates from Spanish, meaning "the girl," analogous to El Niño meaning "the boy."
La Niña, sometimes informally called "anti-El Niño", is the opposite of El Niño, where the latter corresponds instead to a higher sea surface temperature by a deviation of at least 0.5 °C, and its effects are often the reverse of those of El Niño. El Niño is famous due to its potentially catastrophic impact on the weather along both the Chilean, Peruvian and Australia.
Much of the variability in Australia’s climate is connected with the atmospheric enomenon called the Southern Oscillation, a major see-saw of air pressure and rainfall patterns between the Australian/Indonesian region and the eastern Pacific.
When the eastern Pacific Ocean is much cooler than normal, the SOI is usually persistently positive (about +7) and the Walker Circulation (upper panel of Figure 2) is stronger than average. These changes often bring widespread rain and flooding to Australia – this phase is called La Niña.
During La Niña phases, temperatures tend to be below normal, particularly over northern and eastern parts of Australia. The cooling is relatively strongest during the October to March period.
La Niña phases tend to have a effect on temperatures than El Niño phases; that is, temperatures are much cooler than average during La Niña events than they are warmer than average during El Niño events.

Scientists have made important advances in understanding the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon in recent decades as a result of research undertaken at the Bureau of Meteorology and other organisations world-wide. This has led to the development of computer models which can be used to forecast the behaviour of El Niño and La Niña some months in advance.

La Nina is an abnormal oceanic phenomenon that is one of the Severe Weather Conditions on the surface of the earth. During La Nina, the temperature of the water surface of the oceans becomes abnormally cool. La Nina is generally observed in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. La Nina is just the opposite of El Nino. In the case of El Nino, the temperature of the water surface of the oceans becomes warmer than the normal temperature instead of becoming cooler.

The causes of La Nina:

The causes of this kind of severe natural phenomenon are hidden in the major fluctuations of temperature in the surface of waters of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. La Nina occurs when the difference between atmospheric pressures in South America and Indonesia increases to a certain level. La Niña usually occurs just after an El Nino has occurred. In fact due to the change of the air pressures, trade winds are produced. These strong trade winds blow the hot water from the surface of the oceans to the Southeast Asia. Then the inner cold water that is there in the depth of the ocean comes upward. The temperature of this water surface is much cooler than the normal temperature of the ocean.

The causes of La Nina:

The causes of La Nina:

weather out today

2011-05-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

To days wether is moist, cold, partly cloudy, north west wind with stratus clouds and a few stratocumulus.
chance of rain this after noon because the wind is coming from the sea.

2.2

2011-05-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

1. the movement of mass rock.
2. rain and earthquakes weaken the earth.
3. roads and houses on cliffs that weekend the earth around.
4. we measure earthquakes with a Richter scale.
5. intra- plate tension where movement occurs along cracks
6. every 15 months because that happen in very rural areas.
7. killing 13 people injuring more than 120. 3500 homes destroyed. 3000 other buildings damaged.
8. land slide is where the earth moved and shifts where an earthquake is the movment of plates that causes most land slides.
9. a tsunami is a big wall or wave of water that comes from the ocean. they are usually coursed by earthquakes or land slides.
10.earthquake, landslide, volcano.

deadly storms in the US

2011-05-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

President Obama stopped briefly in Tuscaloosa on Friday, to see the destruction for himself.
Whole neighborhoods were flattened, leaving piles of debris around the city and about one million people in the state without electricity. Rescue workers are still searching for survivors.

The president said he had never seen such devastation.

250 deaths (minimum)
1000 inured (minimum)
130 tornado's in just one night (minimum)
most deadly storm to hit the US if around 40 years \

tsunamis

2011-05-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

Social- local government-

People dying- they would have to help the families with the loss.

House-people displacement- they would have to pay for the search, rescue and return of the people who are stranded

Schools and places of interest destroyed- the local government would have to pay for the rebuilding of any destroyed or buildings that now dangerousness or unsafe.

1. The crops would get wiped out leaving people without work and food for a period of time.

2. Animals get swept away.

3. Tree's get knocked due to the force of the wave.

4. Debris from houses end up in lakes, ocean and in drinking water supplies

5. Petrol and other hazardous liquids and gases get into the water killing animal and getting into the water supply

Fishermen loose their jobs

People loose houses so builders are employed
Insurance Companys are having to spend lots of money
As buildings are destroyed small buisnesses are destroyed becasuse they have no buildings and/or computers and/or funds
People loosing homes and living on the street
No buildings
buildings destreyed
Money bing lost

2.1 q 1-11

2011-04-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

1. Something that is natural but can cause deaths if not avoided
2. A hazard could become a disaster but a disaster has happed and has killed people.
3. Weather and earths crust
4.

Weather- drought,flood, heat wave, bush fire, strong winds, storms, cyclones, tornadoes
Earths crust- land slide, tremors, earthquakes, tsunamis

5. Because more people are around to notice them than in the outback/country where very few people live.

6. Lack of water, lack of food, crop needs water to grow.

7. Social, economic, and environmental impacts.

8. because people are expanding and moving and exposing communities to a grater range of threats.

9. Geographers can use the data to predict the areas where natural hazards are most likely to occur.

10.

a. cyclone, flood, brushfire

11.

1:11 Q 1-10

2011-03-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

1: coal , oil, natural gass
2: solar, wind, hydro
3: because australia has lots of renuable sorses like solar and wind we would like to exploit it, e.g if the australian govement put 1km square of solar panals in the lower section of the northern Territory's, they would create enough energy to power the entire world for ever.
4: china, australia, India, china
5: 76 billion tonnes
7: it will power future satellites we sent to space.
8: the wind pushes the arms of a windmill around and that spins a motor to make power.

1:10 q 1-18

2011-03-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

1: Resources are materals that can be used by humans
2: Renewable resources can be renewed and reused, where as non renewable resorces one used can never be used again.
3: renewable recourses can become non renewable by over use and over harvesting it.
4: australian soils are old and fragile. But it is full of nutreanse because australia is so new that it hasent been sucked dry of nutreance. this exes nutriance makes crop plantation and harvest much easer and successful.
5: Silviculture is the practice of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health, and quality of forests
6: 162.7 million hectare
7: australian fishing and aquaculture industrities are woth more than $2 billion.
8: only 5265 tonnes forr the southen blue fin tuna catch in 2006.
9: bauxite, iron ore, lead, zink, silver, uranium, undustrial dimonds, and mineral sands.
10: because more areas of minireals are beeing uncovered because of increes in technology and discovery.
11 australia has one of the most % of there land covered by forrest, but <1% of is is being harvested annually and this is vastly destroing australias forrest land and forrest resorcess.
12: because 120000 tonnes of black coal would need to be burnt to get as much enegy as could be abtained from 1 tonne of uranium fule.
13: because thay are listed asa WHS thay can not be touched by thr mining indestry so thay will highly likely have some recorces that have been untouched by man.
14: i think that uranium mining has advantages and dissadvantages but the advantages are mutch better in the long run than the dissadvantages because be need to fined a nother sorce of fule or we will kill this earth.
15: people are alowed to fish any where thay wand aslong as it is colse to australia and not out in te midle fo the sea becase thay are trying to same asmuch fish as poccible.
16:
a)----
b) radium hill
c) Ranger
17:

18:
a)
i) 290 mill
ii)220 mill
iii)525 mill
b) 470 mill
c)it has gone up alot recently because the world is rearlising that we need to move away from focel fule.

japan quake

2011-03-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

1. Tell me all about the recent natural disaster in Japan

Where was the epicentre of the earthquake?

The epicenter of the earthquake was near the east coast of honshu, japan, 231 miles northeast of Tokyo

What was the size of the earthquake?

The size varries from who tells you on what websight, but thay are all around the 9.0 mark.

What are some of the areas most effected? Describe the devastation and include an image.

Rikusentakada, kesennuma and minamisanriku were the most affected but thay took most damage from the sunami which regesyted at going 300K/H which is faster than a car can travel.

Describe the impending man-made disaster: what, where , why?

nuclia powerplant meltdown, wasent made to witstand these contitions.

1.7

2011-03-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

1. Our plants and animals have evolved separably form the rest of the world.
2. Because of the stabilizability of the continent.
3. Belonging exclusively or confined to a particular place.
4. 89%.
5.
a) Great barrier reef.
b) Tropical rainforest's of Queensland.
c) South-west Botanical Province of western Australia.
6. In the tropical rainforest's
7. Marsupials are pouched animals like the the kangaroo, wallaby and possum
8. Monotremes and egg laing mammals, there are only 3 known Monotremes and they are the duck- billed platypus and two species of echidna
9. They come from the same family but wallaby's are generally smaller than kangaroos and prefer more rugged terrain where as the larger kangaroos are found on grassy terrain.

Year 9: Australia's Large Coastline

2011-03-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Australia has a big coastline and this is a very good thing for where we are positioned in the world, but there are some bad things that can happen when you have a big coastline.

A good point is that we get lots of tourists in summer because it gets very hot and so people go to the beach, so ausys build along the beach's which is great for tourists.

One of the main bad points is that we are very venerable to tidal waves and earthquakes along the shore line. because we build along the beach's we don't get many Surinam's/tidal waves. so when they do hit they are very destructive.

Year 9 Wed 2/3: Predicting the Weather

2011-03-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

1. You have an exchange student coming to visit for the next 3 months from a country in the northern hemisphere.
2. You need to explain to them what the weather is going to be like. Compare the average temperatures between the countries for the next 3 months and the average precipitation. Find an image of a average temp and precipitation graph for your two locations.
3. You are also going to take him to Thredbo in May. Explain to him what it will be like in Thredbo and what clothing he'll need.
4. Make sure you explain the type of clothing your exchange will need and how it is the same/different from what he would normally wear at home.

suggested websites: weatherunderground.com

Hello :LOSDJFAksng[oerhahyPI'[ im rearly looking forard to your visite if a couple of days, it will be greate, but the weather here is different to the waether over there so ypou may need to change your luggage.
firstly if is much colder here in the next fiew nonths than it is at your place. thay datar fairly close but end up ................to be continued........

Year 9 Wed 2/3: Predicting the Weather

2011-03-01T18:33:00.001-08:00

news

2011-02-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

   a. what caused the quake....geographical perspective:   b. where - epicenter and effected areas: cant find
   c. casualties: 75 dead 150 missing
   d. major damage: Several of the old red-brick buildings in the central city have collapsed and roads and bridges have structural damage. Most of the city was without power for several hours after the quake and traffic lights were not functioning in suburban areas. Early reports on radio stations warned of continuing aftershocks and urged residents to stay home and keep calm.
   e. current concerns: cant fined
   f. Give a paragraph about your reactions to the events:
i just don't get that into the horror of this earthquake because if it doesn't affect me i just cant rarely connect to it.

work pg 19 1-16

2011-02-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

1. the western plateau,the central lowlands and the eastern highlands
2. Canberra to Melbourne
3. because it is really old and has been eroded by water
4. Southern edge of amade basin
5.Uluru is a the biggest rock above ground in the world and is shaped from millions of years of wind erosion and is now a sacred icon.
6. because it passes through less atmospheric.
7. an aria of land that has been drained by a river
8. Murry darling and lake ayre
9. Murry river, Murrumbidgee river Darling river
10. it evaporates.
11. it only flows a few days each year.
12. Cheyenne range Tasmania because it was the river that when thay protested the damming and the labor party won, thay made the govement responsivle for national parks
13. the high court ruling by Bob Hawke
14.

2011-02-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

Q1: where a continent moved around the earths crust and basic drifts around the earth.
Q2: Migrating continent
Q3: Rodina
Q4: about 750 million years ago
Q5: South Africa,Asia, Oceania, Antarctica.
Q6: 5cm per year
Q7: less than 1million years old
Q8: air erosion
Q9: study of land forms
Q10: study the land to determine the processors that form and transform them.