80 Weather And Climate Trivia Questions with Answers
80 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?
What scale classifies tornadoes by the damage they cause, from EF0 to EF5?
Answer
Enhanced Fujita scale
Which cloud type is most directly associated with thunderstorms and lightning?
Answer
Cumulonimbus
Which 1993 North American winter storm was nicknamed the “Storm of the Century”?
Answer
1993 Storm of the Century
Which Milankovitch cycle describes the gradual wobble in Earth’s rotational axis?
Answer
Axial precession
Which greenhouse gas is released in the greatest quantity by human activities?
Answer
Carbon dioxide
What is the name of the world’s driest non-polar desert?
Answer
Atacama Desert
What is the highest officially recorded air temperature on Earth?
Answer
56.7 °C (134 °F)
Which volcanic eruption in 1991 caused a measurable short-term drop in global temperatures?
Answer
Mount Pinatubo eruption
What is the name of the broad ocean current that circles Antarctica from west to east?
Answer
Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Which chemical is commonly used as an ice-forming agent in cloud seeding?
Answer
Silver iodide
What name is given to the unusually cold climate of 1816 caused partly by the Mount Tambora eruption?
Answer
Year Without a Summer
Which weather phenomenon produces snow on the downwind side of the Great Lakes?
Answer
Lake-effect snow
What atmospheric measurement is expressed in parts per million on the Keeling Curve?
Answer
Carbon dioxide concentration
What is the long-term warming trend caused by increasing heat-trapping gases called?
Answer
Global warming
What instrument records atmospheric pressure?
Answer
Barometer
What temperature scale sets water’s freezing point at 0 degrees?
Answer
Celsius scale
What effect deflects moving air because Earth rotates?
Answer
Coriolis effect
What orbital cycle describes changes in Earth’s axial tilt over roughly 41,000 years?
Answer
Obliquity cycle
What is the world’s largest desert by area, covering most of Antarctica?
Answer
Antarctic Desert
Who founded the United Kingdom’s first national weather forecasting service in 1854?
Answer
Robert FitzRoy
Which scale ranks the intensity of earthquakes, not weather events, by observed effects and damage?
Answer
Modified Mercalli intensity scale
What was the first tropical cyclone observed by satellite from space?
Answer
Hurricane Esther