Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Warm & Cold Fronts
Two air masses meet in cross-section. Dense cold air wedges steeply under warm air, or warm air glides gently up over retreating cold air — each builds its own clouds and rain band. Press play (or drag the scene) to move the front across the town and read its temperature and pressure trace.
Labs / Geography / Warm & Cold Fronts
Warm & Cold Fronts
Two air masses meet in cross-section. Dense cold air wedges steeply under warm air, or warm air glides gently up over retreating cold air — each builds its own clouds and rain band. Press play (or drag the scene) to move the front across the town and read its temperature and pressure trace.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
slope 1:85cloud Cumulusrain 0.0 mm/hT 20.0 °CP 1013 hPa
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Switch between a cold and a warm front. Which one has the steeper frontal slope, and which one's rain band is wider?
- Watch the trace as a cold front passes: why does the temperature drop so suddenly while a warm front only nudges it up gently?
- Turn the temperature contrast up to the maximum. What happens to the rain intensity and the size of the pressure dip at the town?
- For a warm front, which cloud arrives over the town first — the high wispy cirrus or the low grey nimbostratus? Why does that order make sense?
- Pause and drag the front slowly back and forth across the town. Where exactly is the pressure lowest relative to the surface front?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.