Within those two categories, you will find a rich diversity of question types: data interpretation, analysis, conclusions, definitions, graph construction, and even math sometimes.

That’s why I like meteorology. Some people get meteorology wrong and mistake it for simply memorizing random facts. Although there is some memory involved (like in any field of science), I believe the core of meteorology is applying knowledge to explain what we see in the sky: an inquisitive process that forces students to think deeply and critically.

This idea of “deep thinking” might not make much sense or seem intimidating. So, here are two steps to guide your learning journey.

This step is the most straightforward: just learn the topics listed in the event sheet.

To do this, you’re probably going to have to learn the concepts yourself, and you’re probably going to just be searching for websites online (I wouldn’t recommend textbooks for Meteorology).

The hard parts, however, are:

These are three questions that no one has an easy answer to. Rather, I believe that being able to have strategies to answer these questions is not only going to be important for competitions and academics, but literally everything you will do for the rest of your life.

Open the event sheet, create a list of each topic in the event sheet, and then spend around one hour on each topic.

In middle school, tests are mostly just knowing things. For example, the first bullet point on the event sheet is just knowing the difference between “weather” and “climate”.

If you don’t know the difference, I would Google “weather or climate”, and then read up at least two articles. Next, I would figure out what note-taking system works best for you.

I personally use a different Google Doc for each bigger topic, and review the docs periodically. As I’m reviewing the docs, I reprocess information by representing the topics through drawings in my notebook.

To know whether a website is good, I would:

For more information on finding good articles, check out Meteorology Lesson 3.

For instance, this website from NASA is good because the diagrams are simple and it has a strong diversity of information.

However, this website from UW Madison, is not as helpful, as it is mainly just on the chemical process of ozone depletion and may include concepts that are too specific in chemistry.

Here is one exercise to practice online research.

Overall, some websites that I would recommend that meet the three points above:

As you are studying, remember that the goal of learning all this content is not to simply become a walking encyclopedia of dispersed meteorology factoids. Rather, your goal should be to become a critical thinker by obtaining a deeper knowledge of meteorology concepts.

How do you know if you have a deeper understanding?

Hard to say… but you are in good shape if you can:

Assuming you are confident with the information on the event sheet, I would focus on deeper concepts (not the basics). For example, a “superficial” concept would be knowing that 21% of the atmosphere is composed of oxygen. A “deeper” concept would be explaining why oxygen is only 21% and why that percentage has changed throughout the history of the earth!

Here are some other questions to ponder:

One way to learn stuff deeply is discussing it with other students, a component emphasized in ScioVirtual courses.

For instance, the first camp lesson at ScioVirtual Meteorology challenged students to work in groups to attempt to answer tough chemistry and physics questions that lay the foundation of meteorology:

This step is less straightforward. From my experience, middle school students can easily learn a lot of information if they are just motivated and have the time.

Thus, many students can do well in fact-based True/False and Multiple Choice questions, which can be ~75% of the test.

However, if you want to move to the next level, you will need to improve your ability to problem solve through applying your knowledge.

Most of these application questions will provide you new information, whether it is a data set, a new concept, a hypothetical area of land with different climate conditions, or a formula. You have to use your knowledge to then answer the question.

The best way to develop your skills is to just keep practicing and taking notes of your weak points.

Some good practice test websites:

The last step of finding questions online can be extremely powerful and is probably the number one piece of advice I give to students who ask how to do well in meteorology competitions. In fact, I attribute my own success to finding a couple practice problems on constructing and analyzing meteorological graphs that ended up being quite similar to the real national exam.

Because its hard to find good resources on learning forecasting and analysis, our instructor team worked hard to especially provide some good material for this topic. See below.

The most important thing about learning meteorology is learning how to think.

Just being able to put in the time to comfortably understand meteorology topics is the first step that will get you really far. However, finding practice problems and tests will get you even farther.

If you have questions, email me at sehej@sciovirtual.org.