We did a deep dive into some of the reasons behind Manchester’s weather being so changeable, and here is what we found.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Houston-Bets and as you can see behind me today is another lovely day here in Manchester.
00:06But it comes after a miserable day yesterday. It feels like everyone in Manchester is aware of the weather changing so often.
00:11But after such a clearly up and down week, we're going to have a look at why the weather changes so much here.
00:16It's going to get slightly sciencey so we'll make sure to break it down for you in as easy a way as possible.
00:21But basically, the UK is in a pretty unique place on the globe.
00:24It's positioned pretty northwards and it's a small country exposed to the ocean on all sides, with a huge landmass nearby to the east and south and vast swathes of ocean to the west and north.
00:33This means that the climate of the UK is affected by two main external factors, ocean currents and air masses.
00:39Ocean currents are the directional movement of seawater. It's impacted by gravity, wind and water density.
00:44The main one that impacts the UK and Manchester is the North Atlantic Drift, which carries warm water from the south Atlantic towards the western shores of the UK,
00:52which spreads up the west and causes winters with milder temperatures.
00:55Air masses are large volumes of air in the atmosphere that generally are uniform in temperature and moisture.
01:00The UK is affected by five different air masses, which means that at any time, they can react with each other in different ways, causing changes to the weather.
01:07Imagine that the polar maritime air mass is trying to bring cold and wet weather.
01:11The tropical continental air mass is hotter and drier, and as they clash, different weather fronts are formed.
01:16Climate change has also had a significant impact on which air mass is more prominent at any given time.
01:20Finally, and a point specific to Manchester, there's altitude.
01:24Because of the tall areas that exist on the west coast, when warm, moist air arrives on the coast, it's forced to rise over the mountains and hills,
01:30cooling the air and causing condensation, which means that rain falls basically across the northwest.
01:36Hopefully, this has given you some kind of understanding, and hopefully the weather stays nice for now.
01:40But that's all. We hope that this has helped, and thank you for watching Manchester World.
01:44My friend, for the opportunity to do so.
01:45Thanks for having me so much.
01:45We hope, thank you very much.
01:46Thank you very much.
01:46Thank you!
02:060.