Sicence lab question??? Heat Capacity and Weather!?

Question

The purpose of this lab include demonstrating that different materials gain or lose different amounts of heat and relating this information to weather. a brief summary about the lab

Question: Explain this significance of this result with how heat is transferred on our planet and its implication of how wather patterns form. [ignore: this result]

Answer 1

Well, your question is kind of a mystery, but I'll give you an example of what I think you are talking about.

Water has a much higher heat capacity than dry soil.  So let's compare how temperatures change between an ocean/lake, and some dry land that's nearby.  They are both getting about the same solar radiation (ignoring reflectivity properties of each).  But the dry land heats up much faster than the ocean area because it takes little solar energy to drive up the temperature of dry soil (indicates low heat capacity), but takes a lot to drive up ocean temperatures by the same amount (indicates high heat capacity).  Water has a huge heat capacity compared to dry soil.

Likewise, when the sun goes down, dry soil more readily gives up it's heat towards outer space, while oceans don't so much.  

How does this relate to the atmosphere?  Well whatever surface is being heated causes the atmosphere above it to heat up by various means, like very small scale up/down motions of the air, and also less importantly, by conduction.  So it's safe to say that the air over an ocean responds closely to changes in ocean temperatures (which is not much), versus air over dry soil.

So because of the heat capacity differences, you expect a large daily range of temperatures in the atmosphere above dry ground.  And you would expect daily temp range very small in the atmosphere immediately over the ocean/lake.  So heat capacity of the surface plays a huge role in weather.

Also, humid air tends to have a smaller daily variation in temperature than dry air.  Again, water has a high heat capacity, and humid air contains more water, in vapor form.  So in humid air, a large heating from the surface results in a smaller temperature change than for dry air because a lot of the energy goes into the vaporous water suspended in the air.  Dry air reacts more dramatically with temperature given the same amount of heating from the surface.

Hope this helps.