- 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, ...
Snow that, when melted, yields a greater-than-average amount of water; thus, any snow with a high water content.
Industry:Weather
A circulation system driven by urban–rural differences of temperature (i.e., the urban heat island); a toroidal circulation system of country breezes at low level converging on the city center, resulting in uplift with divergence and return flows aloft. The country breezes arrive in pulses and the strength of the circulation depends on the static stability as well as horizontal temperature differences.
Industry:Weather
A cloud variety composed of merged or separate elements that are elongated and parallel, either suggestive of ocean waves or arranged in ranks and files. Sometimes two distinct wave systems are apparent (biundulatus). The formation is by gravity waves that exhibit broad, nearly parallel lines of cloud oriented normal to the wind direction, with cloud bases near an inversion surface. See cloud classification; Compare cloud streets.
Industry:Weather
Treeless plains that lie poleward of the tree line. The plants thereon are sedges, mosses, lichens, and a few small shrubs. Tundra is mostly underlaid by permafrost, with the result that drainage is bad and the soil may be saturated for long periods. It does not have a permanent snow–ice cover.
Industry:Weather
Water substance in vapor form; one of the most important of all constituents of the atmosphere. Its amount varies widely in space and time due to the great variety of both “sources” of evaporation and “sinks” of condensation that provide active motivation to the hydrologic cycle. Approximately half of all of the atmospheric water vapor is found below 2-km altitude, and only a minute fraction of the total occurs above the tropopause. Water vapor is important not only as the raw material for cloud and rain and snow, but also as a vehicle for the transport of energy (latent heat) and as a regulator of planetary temperatures through absorption and emission of radiation, most significantly in the thermal infrared (the greenhouse effect). The amount of water vapor present in a given air sample may be measured in a number of different ways, involving such concepts as absolute humidity, mixing ratio, dewpoint, relative humidity, specific humidity, and vapor pressure.
Industry:Weather
Having to do with the free atmosphere, including the troposphere and stratosphere. Upper-air observations are distinguished from surface observations, even though an upper-air observation may include data from the surface.
Industry:Weather
In a system of moist air, the ratio of the mass of water vapor present to the volume occupied by the mixture; that is, the density of the water vapor component. Because this measure of atmospheric humidity is not conservative with respect to adiabatic expansion or compression, it is not commonly used by meteorologists. Compare mixing ratio, specific humidity, relative humidity, dewpoint.
Industry:Weather
Having to do with the free atmosphere, including the troposphere and stratosphere. Upper-air observations are distinguished from surface observations, even though an upper-air observation may include data from the surface.
Industry:Weather
The indicated airspeed corrected for temperature and altitude. These corrections are approximate.
Industry:Weather
(Acronym WEFAX. ) A communications service provided by the GOES, GMS, and Meteosat environmental satellites. WEFAX involves acquisition and processing of environmental satellite data on the ground and retransmission of these data at VHF frequencies back through the geostationary spacecraft to low- cost ground readout sites.
Industry:Weather
