Wonders of weather. - Volume 1

Episode of Series “Wonders of weather”.
Volume 1 consists of 4 parts: “The weather machine” looks at the origins of weather, starting with the relationship of a planet to a star in creating atmosphere. Clear, instructive diagrams and photography are used to illustrate that weather is not random, but the result of the formation of big entities in the earth’s atmosphere. Looks at the horse latitudes, Hadley cells, temperate zones, polar cells, trade winds, jet streams, fronts and depressions, the water cycle and humidity in the creation of various climates. “Lightning” is a very complete description, supported by exceptional photographs and film of lightning creation and behaviour, long regarded as the “longest unsolved problem of classical physics”. Contains first hand accounts of being hit by lightning and ways to minimize risk. “Hurricanes” (typhoons, cyclones) are more costly and claim more lives than any other type of storm. This episode shows how they develop and what determines their path and force/speed. Remarkable film images include the arrival and departure of the “eye of the storm”, and footage of a hurricane aftermath taken by Thomas Edison in 1900 with a newly invented movie camera. “Things that fall from the sky” explores the bizarre weather phenomena of raining frogs, fishes, spiders or sand, as well as hail, space debris, meteorites and volcanic ash. Surprisingly frequent and usually small, some are huge, such as the meteorite that landed in Siberia in 1991 with a force equal to 12,000,000 tons of TNT. Was dinosaur extinction triggered by an impact so great that the debris blocked the sun, cooling the planet?