It's hardly surprising that weather is a favorite topic for so many people around the world-it affects where we choose to love

It's hardly surprising that weather is a favorite topic for so many people around the world-it affects where we choose to love, what we wear, our moods, and perhaps even our national characteristics. Studies have shown the changeable weather can make it difficult to concentrate, cloudy skies slow down reaction, and high humidity with hot, dry winds makes many people bad-tempered.

If you live in a place like Britain , where the weather seems to change daily if not hourly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the weather is random. In fact, the weather is controlled by systems which move around areas of the globe. In the UK the weather depends on depressions ( low pressure), often called lows, and anticyclones (high pressure), also known as highs. These systems start in the Atlantic Ocean, and make their way across the British Isles from the west to the east. Highs bring sunny weather, while lows bring rain and wind. In modern times, human activities seem to be altering weather patterns. Gases produced by heavy industry change the temperature of the Earth's surface, and affect cloud formation. Some researchers say that factories in Europe and North America may have been one of the causes of the droughts in Africa in the 1980s.