12.

1 Surface Water and Climate

Summers in Ontario can be rainy and wet. When this happens, the
LINKING TO LITERACY
media often show images of swollen rivers and flooded farm fields
(Figure 1). In other years, unusually dry summers result in drought.
Making Connections
It seems that every year, some weather record is broken: “Hottest
When you read, you can make
connections with the text. There day in June” or “Most snow in one day for a century.” Many other
are three types of connections countries are also experiencing record-breaking weather.
that you can make:
1. Text-to-text: Read the first
paragraph on this page.
How does it relate to the
comic strip on the previous
page?
2. Text-to-self: What extreme
weather have you
experienced? Have you been
in a tornado, flood, or other
type of dangerous weather?
How does your experience
relate to information on this
page?
3. Text-to-world: How does the
text on this page relate to
places, people, or events in
the world? Perhaps you have
seen something about this
topic on the news, on the
Internet, or in a newspaper.
Figure 1 Extreme weather, such as intense rainfall, can cause property damage.

Weather and Climate

weather: the day-to-day What is the difference between weather and climate? Weather is a set
environmental conditions in a given of environmental conditions that changes from day to day.
place at a given time; includes
A description of a day’s weather might include the temperature,
temperature, cloud cover, wind speed,
and precipitation whether it is sunny or cloudy, and what kind of precipitation is falling.
The weather in an area changes during a day. Climate, on the other
climate: an average of weather
conditions in an area over 30 years hand, is a set of environmental conditions averaged over 30 years or
more. It does not describe any particular event at any particular time.
Consider Timmins in northern Ontario. We can describe its
February climate as cold. The average daytime high temperature
is –7.5 °C, and the average overnight low is −21.3 °C. The average
snowfall for the month is 40.6 cm. The weather on February 20, next
winter, however, might be a little different. There could be a daytime
high of 5 °C and an overnight low of –5 °C, and no snow. You can use
climate data to make a prediction about the conditions at a certain
location and at a certain time of year. The actual day-by-day weather
that occurs, however, might be quite different.

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 Causes of Temperature Differences
Energy from the Sun (solar energy) drives the evaporation of water in Sun
the water cycle and also heats Earth’s surface. What happens to Earth’s energy radiated
surface at night, when the Sun disappears below the horizon? Earth from the Sun
cools down as it radiates more energy than it absorbs (Figure 2). The
change from daytime heating to nighttime cooling is so dramatic on
most planets that they cannot support life. energy radiated
from Earth
Heat Capacity (day and night)
Why does Earth support life better than other known planets? Part of
Figure 2 Earth radiates energy at all
the answer lies in the substances that make up Earth’s surface: water, times. As it rotates, the side of Earth
soil, and rock. An important property of these substances is their heat facing the Sun absorbs solar energy
capacity. Heat capacity is a measure of how much thermal energy and Earth warms. The side of Earth
(heat) a substance requires to increase its temperature by a certain turned away from the Sun does not
receive solar energy.
amount. The higher the heat capacity of a substance, the more thermal
energy it can store. Soil and rock have lower heat capacities than
water. This means that soil and rock require less thermal energy than heat capacity: a measure of the
water to increase in temperature (Figure 3). amount of thermal energy needed to
raise the temperature of a substance
by a certain temperature interval;
a measure of how much thermal
energy a particular object can store

31 °C 23 °C

gravel water

Figure 3 If equal amounts of water and gravel start off at the same temperature and
are exposed to the same amount of thermal energy, the gravel will heat up to a higher
temperature than the water because gravel has a lower heat capacity.

Heat capacity also includes the amount of thermal energy that a

substance releases. If the light source is removed from the gravel and
water in Figure 3, they would begin to release their stored thermal
energy to the surrounding air. The gravel, however, would release its
energy more quickly. Gravel has a lower heat capacity than water.
Because of this, the gravel would cool down faster and heat the
surrounding air faster. However, once the gravel has cooled, it would
no longer be able to heat the air, and the air would begin to cool. The
water would heat the air more slowly, but for longer. Water can store
energy for a long time, even if the air above it cools at night, or if the
seasons change.
Earth’s atmosphere is another important part of what makes Earth
so different from most planets. The atmosphere traps some of the
energy radiated from Earth. This helps keep Earth warmer than it
would be otherwise.
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 Heat Sinks and Climate
Anything that absorbs thermal energy without becoming much
heat sink: matter that absorbs warmer is called a heat sink. Substances with high heat capacities,
thermal energy but does not change such as water, are good heat sinks. Oceans can absorb a lot of energy
state or significantly increase in
from the Sun without evaporating. In fact, the temperature of oceans
temperature
remains fairly constant.
Water absorbs energy when sunlight hits the surface of the water.
Water is continually moving and mixing. This moves deep, cooler
water to the surface, where it absorbs more energy. In this way,
energy is transferred throughout the entire body of water. This is what
prevents ocean water from heating up.
The temperature of land increases more on a sunny day than does
the temperature of nearby water. Both land and water can warm the
air above them, but the lower heat capacity of rock and soil means
that the air above the warmed land heats up faster than the air above
the water. When air becomes warm, it becomes less dense. As cooler,
heavier air sinks, it pushes the warmer, lighter air upward (Figure 4).
convection: the transfer of thermal This difference in density causes air movements called convection
energy from one part of a gas or liquid currents, which we feel as wind.
to another by a circulating current
Land gives up stored thermal energy much more rapidly than
of faster-moving and slower-moving
particles water. When the Sun goes down—or when the days get shorter in the
winter—land cools more rapidly than does the water.
warm air
pushed upward

cool air sinks

Figure 4 When the land is warmer land

than the water, the air over the land is
less dense than the cooler air over the
sea
water. The denser air above the water
flows down and toward the land,
causing a sea breeze.

Consider how a body of surface water stores energy and releases

it slowly as the surrounding temperature falls. Table 1 compares the
temperatures of two coastal cities and two inland cities (averaged over
many years).
Table 1 Climate Data for Four Canadian Cities
Victoria Winnipeg Timmins St. John’s

average January minimum

2 −22 −24 −7
temperature (°C)

average July maximum

20 27 24 21
temperature (°C)

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 You would expect each of the cities in Table 1 to receive the same
amount of energy from the Sun throughout the year (Figure 5).
However, you can see that the inland cities, Winnipeg and Timmins,
LINKING TO LITERACY
are colder in the winter and hotter in the summer than the coastal cities.
Making Inferences
Sometimes a text has an
inferred meaning. “Inferred”
means that a text says
something, but also means
something more. The text
here does not tell you about
YUKON the temperature of cities like
Toronto or Halifax. Think about
NORTHWEST
TERRITORIES NUNAVUT what you know about these
cities. One is on the shore of
BRITISH NEWFOUNDLAND
the Great Lakes and the other
COLUMBIA AND is on the East Coast. What have
LABRADOR
you read in the text to infer that
N
WA

ALBERTA
Toronto and Halifax enjoy milder
HE

MANITOBA
C
AT

climates than many Canadian

SK

St. John’s cities?

SA

Victoria ONTARIO
QUEBEC
PRINCE EDWARD
ISLAND
What other Canadian cities
Winnipeg are you familiar with? What
Timmins NOVA SCOTIA
can you infer about their
NEW
BRUNSWICK temperatures based on their
coastal or inland locations?
Figure 5 Victoria, Winnipeg, Timmins, and St. John’s are all approximately the same distance
from the equator. However, the four cities have very different climates.

Scientists have taken temperature measurements of soil and water

over many years. These measurements indicate that only land near
the surface experiences heating and cooling; farther underground, the
temperature remains constant. Temperature changes occur in water to
a much greater depth than on land because the water’s surface is stirred
up by wind, waves, and ocean currents. These factors help to mix warm
surface water with cooler deep water.
Land near water has a milder climate than land far from water
because bodies of water act as heat sinks. Coastal cities are generally
warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than inland
cities. Southwestern Ontario has a more moderate climate than
neighbouring regions to the west and east of the Great Lakes because
the Great Lakes act as heat sinks. They absorb thermal energy during
the summer and gradually release it during the winter.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING

C
1. What is the difference between weather and climate? 3. Describe how warm water at the surface of a lake or ocean
2. Explain in your own words how the heat capacity of water mixes with deeper, cooler water.
makes any body of water a good heat sink. 4. Why do areas close to large bodies of water have milder
climates than inland areas?

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