Year 10 Science · Unit 4 · Lesson 1
Foundation Worksheet
Learning Goals
Fill the gap
Choose the correct word from the word bank to complete each sentence. Use each word once. Two words will not be used.
1. "Climate is what you expect; is what you get." This saying captures the key difference between the two concepts.
2. The long-term average of atmospheric conditions recorded over 30 or more years is called the of a region.
3. Darwin, in Australia's north, sits in the climate zone, it receives high rainfall and is hot and humid most of the year.
4. Alice Springs in central Australia experiences a hot, dry climate with very little annual rainfall.
5. Melbourne and Sydney are examples of cities with a climate, mild temperatures with distinct seasonal changes in rainfall.
6. During an event, warm ocean water in the Pacific shifts eastward, causing eastern Australia to experience reduced rainfall and drought conditions.
7. brings above-average rainfall and flood risk to eastern Australia because warm water remains in the western Pacific, pushing extra moisture over the continent.
Sort it!
Write each item from the pool into the correct column of the table below.
Weather
Climate
ENSO
1. Why do scientists need at least 30 years of data to describe a region's climate, rather than just looking at last year's weather?
2. Name one Australian city for each climate zone: (a) tropical, (b) arid, (c) temperate.
Wrap Up
In one sentence, what was the main idea of this lesson?
Warm Up, Fill the gap
1. weather
2. climate
3. tropical
4. arid
5. temperate
6. El Niño
7. La Niña
Not used: monsoon, Mediterranean. The bank holds 9 words for 7 blanks, so the instruction’s “two words will not be used” is correct. Perth is the Australian city usually given a Mediterranean climate, and it appears in the Sort it! pool below — worth mentioning if a student asks why the word is in the bank at all.
Your Turn, Sort it!
Weather: It rained heavily in Brisbane this morning; There was a strong cold wind in Melbourne on Tuesday; Thunder and lightning were seen over the Blue Mountains yesterday.
Climate: Sydney’s average July temperature is 13°C; Darwin has a distinct wet season from November to April; Perth receives most of its rainfall during winter months; Alice Springs averages fewer than 250 mm of rain per year.
ENSO: Warm Pacific water shifts east, cutting eastern Australia’s rain; La Niña increased flood risk in Queensland in 2022; El Niño contributed to the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires.
The columns are 3, 4 and 3. The tell for Weather is a single named day; for Climate an average or a recurring seasonal pattern; for ENSO a named phase of the cycle. A student who files the ENSO items under Climate has not made a silly mistake — ENSO is a climate pattern — so mark on whether they can say why the ENSO column is separate: it names a specific recurring oscillation rather than a place’s long-term average.
Show What You Know
1. Because a single year is weather, not climate. Any one year can be unusually hot, wet or dry — an El Niño or La Niña year especially so — and describing a region from it would mistake one unusual year for the normal state. Averaging over 30 or more years lets those year-to-year swings cancel out, so what remains is the region’s underlying pattern, and it also gives a stable baseline against which a genuine long-term change can later be detected. [2 marks: 1 for year-to-year variability meaning one year is unrepresentative, 1 for the long average revealing the underlying pattern or providing a baseline.]
2. (a) tropical: Darwin. (b) arid: Alice Springs. (c) temperate: Melbourne or Sydney. [1 mark for all three correct. Accept Cairns or Broome for tropical, Coober Pedy or Kalgoorlie for arid, Hobart or Canberra for temperate.]