Every card in Weather and climate, Year 9
The whole deck, in order — so you can read it through before your child ever sees it.
- Why does a tropical storm weaken soon after it moves over land?
It is cut off from the warm, moist sea air that powers it
HintAsk what was feeding the storm while it was out over the ocean.
WhyEvaporation from warm ocean water is the storm's fuel. Over land the supply stops and friction with the ground slows the winds, so the storm fades within days — though its rain can still cause serious flooding far inland.
- Tropical storms have different names in different places: ____ in the Atlantic, ____ in the north-west Pacific and ____ in the Indian Ocean.
hurricanes; typhoons; cyclones
HintThey are three regional words for exactly the same kind of spinning storm.
WhyThe storm is identical; only the label changes with the ocean. Meteorologists use 'tropical cyclone' as the general term for all of them.
- What is the calm, clear area at the very centre of a tropical storm called?
The eye
HintSatellite pictures show it as a round dark hole in the swirl of cloud.
WhyAir sinks in the centre, so winds are light and the sky may even clear. Around it stands the eyewall, a ring of towering cloud with the storm's strongest winds and heaviest rain.
- A tropical storm brings violent winds, yet wind is not what kills most people. What does?
Water — the storm surge and flooding caused by heavy rain
HintThink about the sea being pushed ashore, and what the clouds release.
WhyLow pressure and powerful winds heap the sea into a surge that can rise several metres above normal tides, while the storm's rain floods rivers far inland. Around the Bay of Bengal, surges sweeping over low islands have caused the greatest loss of life.
- On Norber in the Yorkshire Dales, dark boulders of greywacke, a hard gritty sandstone, sit perched on pale limestone, a completely different rock. What carried them there?
A glacier
HintNo river could lift blocks that size uphill; something frozen and far more powerful did.
WhyBoulders dropped far from the rock they came from are called erratics. They are among the clearest signs that ice once covered Britain: only a moving ice sheet could pick up such blocks and set them down on foreign ground.
- At the coldest point of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago, sea level was roughly 120 metres lower than today. Where had all that water gone?
It was locked up in ice sheets on land
HintSnow that fell on the continents stopped draining back to the ocean.
WhyWith so much water frozen on the continents, the bed of the North Sea was dry and Britain was joined to mainland Europe by a plain now called Doggerland. As the ice melted the sea rose, and Britain became an island about 8,000 years ago.
- The cooler period from about 1300 to 1850, when the River Thames in London sometimes froze over
The Little Ice Age
HintIts name makes it sound like a smaller version of the great freeze that ended thousands of years earlier.
WhyLondoners held 'frost fairs' on the frozen Thames, the last in 1814. The cooling was natural and modest, yet it was enough to shorten growing seasons — a reminder that climate has always shifted.
- Ice still covers Greenland and Antarctica, so geologists say the Ice Age has not truly ended. What is the general name for any warm phase within an ice age, like the one we are living in?
An interglacial
HintThe prefix means 'between', as in 'international'.
WhyOver the last 2.6 million years, long cold glacials have alternated with shorter warm spells. The present one began about 11,700 years ago, and farming and cities have grown up within it.
- Which gas, released when coal, oil and natural gas are burnt, is the main cause of today's global warming? (two words, not the formula)
carbon dioxide
HintPlants take it in for photosynthesis, and you breathe it out.
WhyIts level in the air has risen from about 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution to about 427 in 2025 (NOAA) — higher than at any time in the ice-core record.
- The climate warmed naturally as the last Ice Age ended. What is different about the speed of today's warming?
It is far faster — more than 1 °C in about 150 years
HintThe natural thaw was spread across many millennia.
WhyAs the Ice Age ended, the world warmed by a few degrees over several thousand years. The recent rise — about 1.4 °C since the late 1800s (WMO, 2025) — has come many times faster, and it tracks the rise in greenhouse gases from human activity.
- Since 1979, satellites have measured one feature of the Arctic at the end of each summer and recorded a long-term shrinking. What is it?
Sea ice
HintIt floats, and it forms when the ocean surface freezes.
WhySatellites give an independent check on thermometers: the frozen ocean left at the end of the Arctic summer has shrunk by about 12% per decade since 1979 (NSIDC). Different instruments, same story.
- Carbon dioxide and methane trap heat in the atmosphere, a process known as the ____ effect.
greenhouse
HintIt is named after a glass building that keeps plants warm.
WhySome of this effect is natural and keeps Earth warm enough to live on. Burning fossil fuels and clearing forests add extra heat-trapping gas and strengthen it — that added part is what is warming the planet.
- Action that tackles the causes of climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions
Climate change mitigation
HintSwitching from coal to wind power is one example.
WhyIt deals with the cause: less greenhouse gas going into the air, or more taken out by forests. Its partner, adaptation, deals with the effects that arrive anyway.
- Even if the world cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply tomorrow, why would countries still need to adapt?
Some warming and sea-level rise are already under way
HintCarbon dioxide released decades ago is still in the air.
WhyThe gases already emitted stay in the atmosphere for a long time and the oceans are slow to respond, so some change is locked in. That is why most plans pull both levers: cut the cause and prepare for the effects.
- London is protected from tidal flooding by a line of steel gates across the river at Woolwich. What is this defence called? (two words, without 'the')
Thames Barrier
HintThe first word is the river it spans.
WhyIn use since 1982, its ten steel gates can be raised to shut out a surge coming up the estuary from the North Sea. It had been closed more than 220 times by late 2025 (Environment Agency), and rising sea level means it will be needed more often.
- UK law sets a target of cutting the country's greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by the year ____.
2050
HintIt is the middle of this century.
WhyNet zero means any emissions still produced are balanced by an equal amount removed from the air. The target became law in 2019; closing the last coal-fired power station in 2024 was one step towards it.
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Keep what you learn
Here, nothing is saved. In your child’s own sky every card is scheduled — it comes back just before they’d forget it — and the professor who wrote it is one tap away.