Howdy everyone and welcome to our next video of module 8. In this video, we're going to introduce air masses. An air mass is a very large parcel of air in the boundary layer of the troposphere that possesses relatively uniform qualities of temperature, density, and humidity in the horizontal dimension. So, think warm versus cold and wet versus dry. And they are very large and cohesive. Sometimes the air these air masses can be thousands of miles across. Now air masses are given letter codes that reflect the type of surface and the general location of their source region. So their type of surface is usually defined by lowercase M or C. M standing for marry time meaning over a large body of water. Lowerase C stands for continental which means it's over a large land mass. And then the general location of their source region which is is usually referring to latitude are defined by the capital letter T and capital letter P. Capital letter T stands for tropical. So this occurs in the tropic tropics. And P stands for polar. So these are usually found closer to our poles. And we'll talk about each of these here in a moment. But those are our source regions that reflect the type of surface and general location. Now, MP air masses stands for maritime polar form over the oceans. Marry time at high latitudes, polar. So, MP air masses tend to be cool because they're in the pools or higher latitudes and wet because they form over the oceans. They have a lot of water. So, MP air masses are cool and wet. CP air masses continental polar these are formed over the interior high latitude regions of a continent. Think cool because it's polar high latitude and dry forms over the continents. So not a lot of water. And in winter these air masses are very cold and dry. We still have these air masses in the summer and they're responsible for cooling things down, giving us some moderate temperatures. CT air masses are hot and dry. Continental, tropical. Continental meaning they form over the continents. Large land masses are going to be dry. And T tropical, they're forming in lower latitudes, so it's hot. CT air masses, hot and dry. MT air masses, you could probably guess this one, right? Maritime tropical, hot and humid, associated with sultry summer weather over the eastern United States. But we get these air masses a lot here in Texas. And then we have capital letter A, air masses. A air masses. Didn't really talk about this one yet. These are continental Arctic or polar arctic. So they occur in the very high latitudes, the polar altitudes. These form over the frozen Arctic or even an over Antarctica sometimes. They bring very little precipitation. Um and they cause record-breaking low temperatures. They're very cold, very dry. Polar vortex. Remember the polar vortex? Remember that 2021 uh Texas freeze? these air masses is what's responsible for the that Texas freeze. And we'll talk about that again when we get to inclement weather. So, here's just a map showing some of the general formation of a lot of our common air masses we see on Earth. And again you can see that the letters very closely relates to its source region whether it's over water or over land and the latitude location whether it's in the tropics or in the pole polar region. So maritime tropics where over the oceans and the tropics continental tropics wherever the continent in the tropics. So this is wet and and uh hot so very humid conditions. This is hot and dry very dry conditions. And we know we have a desert located here. And then we have maritime polar. This is colder but still wet. And continental polar and continental arctic. Dry and cold over the continents. So you can see how that distributes across the world and how different um air masses form. And as these air masses are able to move, it's going to also impact climate and weather conditions across regions. And in our next video, we're going to start talking about the different mechanisms that we can get cloud formation to occur. Now, we know clouds are formed when we have saturated air and cloud nuclei, but there are many different ways that we can get those that those conditions to form, and we'll talk about that next.