Today, I would explain why our weather recently is SO HOT! Yet, do you realize it is only really really hot during the morning to afternoon, then suddenly at around 5pm it starts to rain? Well, below is an explanation for it. (This relates to Singapore’s seasons.)
Singapore is currently going through something called the inter-monsoon season, which means a season between two monsoons. This season is characterized by hot, intense heat during the afternoons followed by short but heavy thunderstorms later in the day. The atmosphere is also very humid, with weak winds in the afternoon but heavy winds during the thunderstorms.
Contrary to much belief, Singapore does have seasons! The uniform weather in Singapore is affected by two specific season-Northeast Monsoon Season (December-March), where the season north easterly winds blow through Singapore and Southwest Monsoon Season (June-September), south easterly or south westerly wind blow through the country. Between each monsoon season, there is another kind of season called the inter-monsoon season which occurs during May-April and October-November. The difference between the Monsoon seasons and inter-monsoon seasons is the strength of the wind as well as the effect of the sun. During monsoon seasons, the wind is constant and strong and it blows from a uniform direction. This uniform direction of wind leads to a more predictable and fairly constant weather. However, during the inter-monsoon period, the winds are weaker and they do not come from a fixed direction, leading to more erratic weather, which is occurring now.
Furthermore, during this season, due to the earth’s tilt, the equator is directly below the sun, which explains the hot noon temperature. This hotter temperature would then lead to the heavy downpour later in the day. As said above, as the surface heats up, the warm air would rise and cool to form water vapor, which would condense to produce clouds that form rain. Since there are higher temperature in the afternoon, it would likely result in heavier rains later in the day as more hot air rise to form clouds. Hence, the weather now is not only hot, but it also has a high humidity, with drastic weather changes.
Taken from: http://www.climatetemp.info/singapore/
Breakdown/ Summary of graph:
Months with high average temperature: March, APRIL, MAY, June
Months with high humidity: Jan, APRIL, MAY, November, December
Well, now we can see why it is so hot and so humid!
Bibliography
Done by: Tay Li Lin (14)
This is just an explanation of what monsoon is and why it is more predictable?
ReplyDeleteMonsoon occurs due to a shift in wind direction which causes excessive rainfall.
There are 2 types of directions:
1/ onshore flow of air (air moving from ocean towards land) during the summer or high-sun season. This flow makes air moister, and hence lead to heavy monsoonal rainfall.
2/ offshore air flow (air moving from land toward ocean) during the winter or low-sun season. This flow makes air dryer.
The change in direction of wind is due to the difference in pressure which caused by the difference the way water and land heat.
the previous comment is posted by Quynh...sorry. I forgot to add my name.
ReplyDelete