AIR MASSES
The weather that we experience on earth is controlled by a variety of factors, one of the most significant being air masses.
An air mass is a huge body of air, so large that it often stretches for several thousand miles. Each air mass has its own specific characteristics.
The geographical location from which an air mass originates is its source, such as;
— CONTINENTAL air masses, which occur over large land masses and usually contain less moisture and therefore tend to be dry.
— MARITIME air masses which originate over large bodies of water, hence they are moist.
These sources are represented by a lowercase ‘c’ and ‘m’ respectively.
The types of air masses formed on planet earth are determined by their source region in which we further classify them into Arctic, Polar, and Tropical.
These categories are represented by the first letter of the source region, in upper case: ‘A’, ‘P’, and ‘T’.
Thus, we can combine the category letters, giving us a total of SIX TYPES of air masses on earth.
- mA — maritime Arctic.
- mP — maritime Polar.
- mT — maritime Tropical.
- cA — continental Arctic.
- cP — continental Polar.
- cT — continental Tropical.
MARITIME AIR MASSES are moist due that air that traverse ocean regions picks up moisure en-route.
mA/mP are cool, whereas mT produce the warm, humid conditions you would expect in the tropics.
In contrast, CONTINENTAL AIR MASSES produce dry weather due that the air does not pick up the same amount of moisture when traversing a continent.
As a result, wonderful weather prevails in the sunshine state of USA yet thunderstorms may rapidly build up in the summer months due to the high moisture content which the maritime Tropical air contains.
As air masses move over different regions, they will gradually take on the characteristics of the new region and begin to change.
i.e. cA moving south across the North Atlantic will pick up heat and moisture, eventually becoming mP.
