- Industry: Weather
- Number of terms: 60695
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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, ...
Eluding precise prediction, completely irregular. In connection with probability and statistics, the term random implies collective or long-run regularity; thus a long record of the behavior of a random phenomenon presumably gives a fair indication of its general behavior in another long record, although the individual observations have no discernible system of progression. Compare nondeterministic, stochastic.
Industry:Weather
Electromagnetic waves in the ELF range trapped in the spherical cavity formed by the conductive earth and the conductive ionosphere. The fundamental resonance mode represents one wavelength around the earth with a corresponding frequency of approximately 8 Hz. The resonances are maintained continuously by global lightning activity. Five to seven higher-order modes are frequently discernible.
Industry:Weather
Electromagnetic radiation with a frequency lying within a radio frequency band.
Industry:Weather
Electromagnetic energy from the sun measured by a radar and used as a reference signal for calibration. The solar signal may also be regarded as noise when a radar beam scans across the sun or when it interferes with communications. See sun pointing.
Industry:Weather
Either of two processes by which small ions disappear. The first of these processes is the union of a small ion and a neutral Aitken nucleus to form a new large ion; the second is the neutralization of a large ion by the small ion. The rate at which these processes occur is expressed by the magnitude of the combination coefficient for each process.
Industry:Weather
Effect in which depletion of ozone at high altitudes is partially compensated for by an increased penetration of solar radiation to lower altitudes, thus increasing the rate of ozone production at the lower altitudes.
Industry:Weather
Dynamically the same as the hydraulic jump, but in meteorological contexts the equations are applied to a temperature inversion or to a system of two inversions. The phenomenon of a pressure jump is thus a steady-state propagation of a sudden finite change of inversion height, in analogy to the shock wave in a compressible fluid. The prefrontal squall line has been interpreted as a pressure jump, with the cold front providing the initial pistonlike impetus. See'' also'' compression wave.
Industry:Weather
Distribution of rainfall rate, in time, during a storm. See'' also'' hyetograph.
Industry:Weather
Distinguished from other rainbows by its angular radius, color order, and brightness. The bow is seen between about 50° and 54° from the antisolar point (shadow of the observer's head) or, equivalently, between 130° and 134° from a light source (such as the sun). Reds are found to the inside of the bow (closest to the primary bow) with the blues to the outside. The secondary bow is usually dimmer than the primary bow. Any theory of the bow that approximates the behavior of light as a ray attributes the secondary bow to light that has undergone two internal reflections. The losses accompanying the additional reflection account for the bow being fainter than the primary bow. This may mean that the bow has insufficient contrast to be distinguished from the background. It is sometimes incorrectly asserted that the extra reflection, by itself, is responsible for the reversal of colors from those of the primary bow. See'' also'' rainbow, supernumerary rainbows; Compare primary rainbow.
Industry:Weather
