Other examples of global patterns could include: global patterns of earthquake distributions(seismic activity) and volcanic eruptions. Again, similar occurrences occur around the globe from New Zealand to Iceland and in between, all related to the pattern of the earth's crust and the tectonic plates, for example the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Returning to the wind patterns these are part of the global climate patterns which arise from the differential heating of the earth's oceans and land masses by the sun and the transfer of this heat energy through global circulations through the atmosphere and the oceans, and the links between the two. The land temperatures fluctuates much more quickly and over a wider temperature range compared to the oceans which act like a heat sink.
As mentioned the earth receives its heat from the sun in the form of UV and visible light photons which heat the land and oceans. The land irradiates some of this heat back to space. If all the heat radiated from the sun to the earth was irradiated back to space then the planet would be too cold to support life. However the gases in the atmosphere trap some of this Infra red radiation, thus warming up the temperature of the earth, allowing life to survive and flourish; this is known as the greenhouse effect which is again another global pattern. Without the greenhouse effect there would be no life on earth; you can compare it to a greenhouse where the glass allows sunlight energy in but traps a lot of the heat inside the greenhouse allowing a horticulturist to grow fruits and vegetables that s/he would not be able to grow outside. Another analogy would be to think of sitting in a car with the windows up on a hot summer day and slowly baking as the heat becomes oppressive! Not a nice place!
This is where the global pattern: global warming enters the picture; and not in a good way for many of aspects of the earth's human and non human facets, which are all interconnected, or linked, in some way or another.At it's simplest if can be understood that the natural occurring greenhouse effect is having an adverse effect on global climate patterns by causing the average temperature of the earth to increase, due in part to human activity and the ever increasing technological race and exploitation of the planet as humans have gone from a rural agrarian lifestyle to a more urban, complex and technology advanced lifestyle. Factors to consider are increasing exploitation and use of fossil fuels for transport, heat, electricity production, industrialisation etc which has gone hand in hand with ever increasing rates of deforestation.
It may be easy to think of global patterns in terms of territories, borders and flows, and proximity and distance in order to understand some of the links and processes within this pattern. It is obvious that New Zealand and any other country can be classified as a territory but so can fossil fuel reserves, polar ice caps, wind patterns, oceans, areas of forest such as the Amazon, carbon dioxide emissions, the atmosphere etc, whilst flows can include movements of people from territory to territory or just within a territory, as well as, for example, flows of carbon dioxide from one territory to another. As things can flow they can then obviously have impacts across wide areas; in this case globally because increasingly human flows are becoming less and less constrained by borders, non human flows are not subject to border controls and some territories, such as oceans and the atmosphere, are not constrained by borders.
I hope this post will help in preparing for the Unit Standard Assessment (5093); it should be a start anyway.
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