- Industry: Weather
- Number of terms: 60695
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
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, ...
Small, faintly colored rings of light surrounding the antisolar point, seen when looking down at a water cloud. Having a radius of only a few degrees, the glory often surrounds an airplane's shadow cast on a cloud or a mountain climber's shadow cast on fog in a valley. (The shadow of the observer plays no role in the phenomenon other than as easy way of quickly finding the antisolar point. )The glory is not as easily described by simple theory as is the corona. Nevertheless, some similarities hold: the angular size of a particular ring is approximately inversely proportional to drop size. The result is that glories are formed by droplets with radii smaller than about 25 μm (the rings from larger droplets are washed out by the angular width of the sun). Similarly, a broad droplet distribution will destroy the glory.
Industry:Weather
Small areas of fog of little vertical extent (normally greater than 2 but less than 6 m (6–20 ft)) that reduce horizontal visibility. Stars and the sun may be seen through the patches.
Industry:Weather
Small cumulus clouds that are everywhere negatively buoyant compared to the surrounding environment, but that exist because the inertia of the rising thermals feeding them from underneath is sufficient to penetrate the lifting condensation level (LCL). Morphologically, these are often cumulus humilis clouds and are typically found at the top of the convective boundary layer during daytime over land, when a strong temperature inversion aloft prevents the clouds from growing deeper. Compare active cloud, passive cloud.
Industry:Weather
Simply, a system of fronts as they appear on a synoptic chart. This is used for 1) a continuous front and its characteristics along its entire extent, including its warm, cold, stationary, and occluded sectors, its variations of intensity, and any frontal cyclones along it; and 2) the orientation and nature of the fronts within the circulation of a frontal cyclone.
Industry:Weather
Simplest member of aldehyde family, formula CH2O. Formaldehyde is very soluble in water; solutions of formaldehyde (formalin) are used in biological labs to preserve samples. Formaldehyde is fairly toxic; health concerns are associated with its emission from foam, cavity insulation, or new plastic materials such as upholstery, carpet, etc. Formaldehyde is present in the atmosphere as an intermediate in the oxidation of methane and many other hydrocarbons; its photolysis is a major source of free radicals in the atmosphere.
Industry:Weather
Scattering into directions forward of a plane through the scattering center and orthogonal to the incident direction. Forward scatter makes up half of the total Rayleigh scatter. This fraction increases with increasing particle size at a given wavelength, so that large particle scatter is predominantly forward scatter. See also asymmetry factor.
Industry:Weather
Sea ice that has not yet experienced summer melt. First-year ice is distinguished from older ice primarily by having a higher salinity. Undeformed first-year ice differs from older ice in that it is smoother and lacks refrozen melt ponds. First-year ridges are distinguished by being larger, more angular, and more porous than multiyear ridges.
Industry:Weather
Simplest of the organic (carboxylic) acids, formula HCOOH, systematic name methanoic acid. Formic acid is found in both the gas and aqueous phases in the atmosphere, and is thought to be formed as a product of formaldehyde oxidation.
Industry:Weather
Revising a previous estimate of a forecast (i.e., flood, streamflow, precipitation, etc. ) by using information acquired between the time of the estimate and the present time.
Industry:Weather
