Hello, I’m Helen Roberts and I’m a Senior Operational Meteorologist here at the Met Office. Learn About Weather is an exciting course that will guide you through the basics of how the weather works. I’ve put together a team of experts, including some familiar faces and together we’ll share our knowledge so that when you see a TV weather forecast or look at a weather chart online you’ll have a better understanding of why that weather’s happening and how that weather might impact you. Here are some of the questions we’ll be answering throughout the course. We’ll start by looking at the large-scale processes and ask the most fundamental of questions; why and how do we get weather?

So we’ll explore the global circulation system and how this leads to different climate zones across the Earth, as well as the structure of our atmosphere. In the UK we’re sandwiched between a vast ocean to the west and a huge continent to the east, and between the cold Arctic to the north and the warm tropics to the south, meaning that the wind direction has big implications for the type of weather we can expect. So

we’ll be answering the questions: what are air masses, what are their characteristics and what do they mean for the weather in the UK, and have you ever wanted a better understanding of weather charts and the forecasts that you see on TV? Then this is the course for you. We’ll finish the first part of the course by looking at clouds, their types and names and what they can tell us about the weather to come and of course we want to understand what falls out of clouds, so we’ll talk about precipitation too. However that’s not where it ends, because then we have some additional learning to offer you. Are you a gardener?

We know that nearly half of the UK population garden on a regular basis. In partnership with experts from the Royal Horticultural Society, we can help you make the most of the weather forecast as well as understanding climate change and how you can help your garden adapt these changes. Perhaps you’re a photographer spending a lot of time outdoors trying to anticipate what the weather is going to do, and would like to understand more about the ways in which weather can affect your pictures and how you can use it to improve your shots, well the experts at the Royal Photographic Society have lots of advice and tips.

Or maybe you’re a walker where being outdoors in the elements is the name of the game We’ll make sure you understand and avoid weather hazards and optimise your explorations. So we really do hope that you can join us on this fascinating course and not just learn about the weather, but help you to make more informed decisions about how the weather might impact you and your leisure activities.