THE 55th QUIZ - METEOROLOGY & WEATHER

Partly because I'm concerned I don't know enough about certain subjects (all of them really) and partly because it just seems like a fun idea, I'm going to theme my quizzes for a while. I've picked 100 (arbitrarily chosen) subjects and I'm going to write 20 questions on each. Starting with this one on Meteorology and Weather:

1. Named after the French mathematician and scientist who described it in 1835, what name is given to the apparent deflection of objects moving in a straight line caused by the Earth’s rotation, that is responsible for the direction of the rotation of large hurricanes?
2. During the Vietnam War, Operation Popeye was an American military project that aimed to extend the Monsoon Season over the Ho Chi Minh Trail by seeding the clouds above northern Vietnam with which chemical compound?
3. The hottest air temperature ever recorded was 57.7°C (135.9°F) on the 13th September 1922 in which city in northern Libya?
4. In meteorology, what name is given to the law that states that convergence into a given column of air must be balanced by an equal divergence from that same column of air?
5. The Peru Current is a cold, low salinity ocean current that extends along the West Coast of South America from Northern Peru to the southern tip of Chile. By what name is it better known?
6. Who was the Norwegian meteorologist, considered one of the founders of modern weather forecasting, who founded the Bergen Geophysical Institute in 1917 and wrote there the hugely influential book ‘On the Dynamics of the Circular Vortex with Applications to the Atmosphere and to Atmospheric cows and Wave Motion’?
7. The MJO is an equatorial travelling pattern of anomalous rainfall, observed primarily in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, that is the subject of large-scale on-going study as it is, as yet, not well understood. For what do the letters MJO stand?
8. Often occurring in deserts and other places of flat terrain it is a rotating updraft, that can range in size from half a meter across to over ten meters wide and over one thousand meters high. Navajo Indians refer to one as a chindi (or ghost). In Australia one is called a willy willy. In Egypt it is known as a Fasset El 'Afreet (or ghost’s wind) and in Kenya it is sometimes known as a ngoma cia aka (or woman’s demon). How is this weather phenomenon usually referred to in English?
9. What name is given to the instrument that is used to measure the drop size and velocity of hydrometeors, thus enabling it to distinguish between different types of precipitation such as rain and hail?
10. The Mistral and Bora are famous examples of which kind of (usually cold) wind, its name deriving from the Greek for ‘going downhill’, that blows down an incline such as a mountain or a glacier?
11. Introduced by scientists at the University of Chicago in 1971, what is measured on the Fujita Scale?
12. Coined by the MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel in 1996, what name is given to a hypothetical tropical cyclone, with wind speeds of over 500 kilometres an hour and an enormous lifespan, that could form if ocean temperatures reached around 50° Celsius as a result of global warming, asteroid impact or a large volcanic eruption?
13. Named after the archipelago in the Arctic Ocean where it was first described by Gerrit de Veer, a member of Willem Barents' expedition into the polar region, what name is given to the polar mirage, caused by the refraction of sunlight between atmospheric thermoclines, that gives the effect that the Sun is rising earlier than it actually should?
14. Once thought simply to be a product of folklore, Lluvia de Peces or Rain of Fish is an annual phenomenon, in which hundreds of living freshwater fish are found on land after heavy rainfall, taking place between May and June in which country? It is thought that the fish do not ‘rain’ but, instead, are ‘washed up’ from subterranean rivers by the heavy rainfall, giving the impression that they have come down in the rain.
15. The first recorded theory for the existence of what is attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle who believed that it was caused by the collision of clouds?
16. Named for its scent, what do we call the reddish-pink snow, caused by the presence of Chlamydomonas nivalis, a species of algae, that is common during the summer in alpine and coastal polar regions?
17. What is the name of the current chief executive of the Met Office who replaced Mark Hutchinson earlier this year?
18. Also known as a fire cloud, what scientific name is given to the dense cumuliform cloud that is produced by the intense heating of the air from the surface, most commonly induced by forest fires but most easily recognizable as the cloud formed above a volcano during an eruption?
19. Elaborated on by his student Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī, the Persian astronomer Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, author of the ‘Pearly Crown’, is generally held to be the first scientist to give a correct explanation for the formation of which meteorological phenomenon?
20. The warmest temperature ever recording during snowfall was 8.3 °C (47 °F) at which American airport?


The answers:


1. CORIOLIS EFFECT
2. SILVER IODIDE
3. AL ‘AZIZIYAH
4. DINE’S COMPENSATION
5. HUMBOLDT CURRENT
6. VILHELM BJERKNES
7. MADDEN-JULIAN OSCILLATION
8. DUST DEVIL
9. DISDROMETER
10. KATABATIC WIND
11. TORNADO INTENSITY
12. HYPERCANE
13. NOVAYA ZEMLYA EFFECT
14. HONDURAS
15. THUNDER
16. WATERMELON SNOW
17. JOHN HIRST
18. PYROCUMULUS
19. RAINBOW
20. LA GUARDIA