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Monsoon Rains on a Tea Estate

Grade 6 earth science: rain records from India's west coast and a sand-and-water model show how uneven heating and Earth's rotation drive the monsoon.

Grade 6ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-ESS2-6

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students analyze rain and wind records to describe a seasonal pattern of atmospheric circulation.
Students use a sand-and-water heating model to explain how uneven heating of land and sea drives winds.
Students explain how Earth's rotation and mountains shape where the rain falls.

How to use

Read the passage together and look at the three tables in order. Section 2 works best after students have seen or done a sand-and-water heating demonstration.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-ESS2-6

Model how uneven heating and Earth's rotation cause patterns of atmospheric and ocean circulation that shape climate.

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Name Date

Monsoon Rains on a Tea Estate

Use rain records and a land-and-sea model to explain a seasonal wind pattern.

Rain across the mountains

Read the passage and Table 1. Then answer the questions.

Wet Julys, Dry Januarys

1Every summer, sixth grader Nivedita Menon flies from Ohio to visit her grandparents on their tea estate in Kerala, a state on the southwest coast of India. The estate sits about 1,500 m up on the western slopes of the Western Ghats, a mountain range that runs along the coast. In July, rain drums on the roof almost every afternoon, but when she visited one January, the hills were dry and sunny. Her grandfather, Mr. Raghavan Menon, showed her the rain records he has kept for 30 years.

2Table 1 compares the estate with a city on the coast and a town on the eastern side of the mountains. Table 2 compares the temperature over central India with the temperature of the Arabian Sea, the part of the ocean west of India. The three places are made up, but all the numbers are based on real records from southern India.

3Back home, Nivedita's science class built a model of land and sea. They filled one tray with dry sand and an identical tray with water, both 3 cm deep and both starting at 22 °C. The teacher hung one heat lamp at the same height over both trays. The class read a thermometer in each tray every 10 minutes, for 20 minutes with the lamp on and then 20 minutes with it off (Table 3).

4Winds that travel long distances over Earth do not move in straight lines. Because Earth rotates, they curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. In summer, the winds that reach India's west coast start out south of the equator, blowing from the southeast toward the north.