- 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 hypothetical “body” that absorbs some constant fraction, between 0 and 1, of all electromagnetic radiation incident upon it. This fraction is the absorptivity and is independent of wavelength. As such, a graybody represents a surface of absorptive characteristics intermediate between those of a white body and a blackbody. No such substances are known in nature.
Industry:Weather
A hygrometer using goldbeater's skin as the sensitive element. Variations of the physical dimensions of the skin caused by its hygroscopic character indicate atmospheric relative humidity. The length of a piece of goldbeater's skin changes between 5% and 7% for a change in humidity from 0% to 100%. The time constant of response becomes extremely long both at low ambient temperatures and at very high and very low relative humidity. (Note: Goldbeater's skin is the prepared outside membrane of the large intestine of an ox; it is used in goldbeating to separate the leaves of the metal. )
Industry:Weather
A hot spring that ejects intermittent jets of water and steam. The action results from heating of groundwater circulating through hot rock under conditions that prevent continuous circulation.
Industry:Weather
A high-pressure system centered over the Great Basin of the western United States. It is a frequent feature of the surface chart in the winter season.
Industry:Weather
A horizontal wavelike deformation of a front in the lower levels, commonly associated with a maximum of cyclonic circulation in the adjacent flow. It may develop into a wave cyclone.
Industry:Weather
A group of chemical species that are rapidly interconverted by chemical reactions. For example, hydrogen atoms (H), hydroxyl radical (OH), and hydroperoxyl radical (HO2) are referred to as the “odd hydrogen” family. Other families are the NOx family (NO and NO2), and ClOx family (predominantly Cl and ClO). The concept of chemical families is often encountered in the modeling of atmospheric chemistry, where the treatment of groups of interconverting species as families can reduce the complexity of the model calculation.
Industry:Weather
A gulf along the northern Pacific coast of Costa Rica that is frequently affected by strong offshore winds blowing from the Caribbean across Lake Nicaragua. See Papagayo, Tehuano.
Industry:Weather
A gulf along the southern Pacific coast of Mexico that in winter is affected by frequent strong winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico southward across the isthmus of Tehuantepec into the Pacific. See Tehuano, Papagayo.
Industry:Weather
