Choose ALL of the factors that influence climate Lesson 1.03
closeness to bodies of water
Altitude ( height above sea level)
latitude
geographic location
ocean currents

a rain shadow is a dry region of land on the side that is protected against the prevailing winds of a mountain range. the prevailing winds are the winds that occur most of the time in a particular place of the earth

prevailing winds carry air toward the mountain range. as the air rises up over a mountain range, the air cools, water vapor condenses, and clouds form. on this side of the mountains, called the windward side, precipitation falls in the form of  rain  or snow. this dry air produces a  rain shadow.

most historians agree that gabriel mouton, the vicar of st. paul’s church in lyons, france, is the “founding father” of the metric system. he proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. mouton based it on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). he also proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length (about 25 cm). a pendulum beating with this length would have been fairly easy to produce, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. over the years, his work was revised, improved, and extended by a number of french scientists.

the political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the french revolutionary national assembly was the bishop of autun, better known as talleyrand. under his auspices, the french academy appointed several committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures for france. one of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth’s meridian (i.e., one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the north pole).