This document discusses three main types of rainfall: relief, convective, and frontal. Relief rainfall occurs when air is blown over the sea and then forced up over high land, causing the air to cool and condense into rain. Convective rainfall primarily happens in tropical areas where hot air rises, cools, and forms rain, sometimes causing thunderstorms. Frontal rainfall occurs at the boundary of warm and cold air masses, where warm air is forced to rise over cold air, cooling and condensing into rainclouds and precipitation. Diagrams and descriptions of each rainfall type are provided.

1. Rainfall
LO: Explain the different types of rainfall

2. Video clips
• Reminder of the water cycle (Met Office)
• Relief rainfall BBC (Geographer Online)
• Convectional rainfall Geographer Online (+ BBC; a
student video;)
• Frontal rainfall Met Office (Geographer Online)
• (A teacher’s summary of all 3;)

3. Rainfall types:
- Stick each diagram in
- Give each diagram the correct title
- Add labels to state what is happening at each number (1,2,3 and 4) to help
explain how these types of rainfall occur.

4. Relief rainfall
•Relief rainfall occurs when air has been blown over the sea and is
then forced up over an area of high land.
•This causes the air to cool and the moisture in the air condenses
and rain falls.
Convectional rainfall
•Occurs mostly in tropics where it is hot.
•When air is hot is rises and cools and condenses forming rain.
•If the air is hot enough, it rises very quickly and can cause
thunderstorms.
Frontal rainfall
•Frontal rainfall occurs when warm air is forced to rise over cold air.
•The moisture in the warm air condenses as it cools which causes
clouds and rain.
Write the
descriptions
in your
books, then
match these
to the
correct
rainfall type

5. Relief rainfall
•Relief rainfall occurs when air has been blown over the sea and is then forced
up over an area of high land.
•This causes the air to cool and the moisture in the air condenses and rain falls.
(Source: ProjectGCSE)
This model gets its name from the relief of the land causing the rainfall.

6. Convectional rainfall
•Occurs mostly in tropics where it is hot.
•When air is hot is rises and cools and condenses forming rain.
•If the air is hot enough, it rises very quickly and can cause thunderstorms.

7. Frontal rainfall
•Frontal rainfall occurs when warm air is forced to rise over cold air.
•The moisture in the warm air condenses as it cools which causes clouds
and rain.
•In the example below the warm air is less dense; the cold air acts like the
mountain in the relief rainfall model: it is denser and forces the warmer air
upwards – and of course this means it cools…

8. FINAL GRADED TASK: Thursday Lesson
Pick any one rainfall type;
Create an information sheet for this, the main part of which is a neat,
annotated diagram, using any appropriate terms
To achieve excellent you should think about an actual example where such
climactic conditions exist (eg use what you’ve learned about Britain, or perhaps
Luxembourg, or somewhere you’ve been – or an example from the videos)
adding further detail on why weather patterns occur
Try to provide some sidebars/boxes (as with the waterfall display) that shows
additional knowledge