- Industry: Weather
- Number of terms: 60695
- Number of blossaries: 0
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The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals, ...
A general term for the reduction of power in a transmitted radio signal resulting from any or all of such effects as range attenuation, precipitation attenuation, multipath transmission, etc.
Industry:Weather
A front that is present in the upper air but typically does not extend to the ground.
Industry:Weather
A fluid for which the molecular viscous effects of diffusion and dissipation can have significant effects on the flow. The importance of viscosity depends on the relevant velocity and length scales of the flow and the viscosity of the fluid. The nondimensional measure of the relative importance of viscosity is the reciprocal of the Reynolds number, Re. For typical atmospheric flows, Re > 10<sup>7</sup>, implying that viscous effects may be neglected relative to the leading (''O''(1)) terms in the Navier–Stokes equations. However, in a turbulent flow, such as in the boundary layer, vortex stretching causes a continuous nonlinear cascade of turbulence kinetic energy, TKE, from large scales to smaller scales. The largest-scale eddies are responsible for the Reynolds stresses and conversion of mean flow energy into TKE. At some point in the cascade, the eddies will have length and velocity scales that are sufficiently reduced for the Reynolds number to be of order 1. At these scales the TKE of eddies can be converted into internal energy through viscous dissipation. These small eddies will have a much shorter timescale than the largest eddies in the flow and are thus statistically independent of the large-scale motion. For a developed turbulent flow, the rate at which the mean flow energy is converted into turbulence at the largest scales must be equal to the rate at which it is ultimately dissipated by viscosity by the small-scale eddies. These smallest eddies have scales that are very much larger than those of the molecular motions, and the continuum hypothesis is still valid for describing eddies of this size. Although dissipation occurs at the smallest possible eddies in the flow and the TKE is contained in the largest-scale eddies, the viscous dissipation is a leading term in the TKE budget and may not be ignored. See turbulence spectrum, turbulence length scales.
Industry:Weather
A fluid flow characterized by turbulence. See eddy, laminar flow, transitional flow.
Industry:Weather
A feature of hard snow formed by wind. Similar to sastrugi, but more commonly applied to a single ridge.
Industry:Weather
A disruption of airflow caused by the passage of a body through the air. In aviation, wake turbulence has been known to cause upset of one aircraft following another. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued regulations requiring aircraft to take off, land, and fly minimum distances behind other aircraft. These distances vary by aircraft type.
Industry:Weather
A flow in which the viscous and Reynolds stresses are of approximately equal magnitude. It is transitional between laminar flow and turbulent flow. See laminar boundary layer, turbulent boundary layer.
Industry:Weather
A flight condition wherein an aircraft is operated under modified visual flight rules while in flight between two layers of clouds and/or obscuring phenomena, each of which constitutes a ceiling. Compare VFR on top.
Industry:Weather
