- 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 reaction that occurs at the surface of a solid particle, between a gas- phase species and a species in the condensed phase. An example is the hydrolysis of N2O5 on a polar stratospheric cloud, in which a gas- phase N2O5 molecule is converted to two HNO3 molecules by reaction with condensed water. See also heterogeneous chemistry.
Industry:Weather
A particular form of rafted ice, typical of thin ice, whereby overlapping occurs in alternating, interlocking segments (like the interlaced fingers of clasped hands).
Industry:Weather
A pattern of smokestack plume dispersion in a statically stable atmosphere, in which the plume spreads out in the horizontal like an oriental fan and meanders about at a fixed height with little vertical spread. Compare looping, coning, fumigation.
Industry:Weather
A numerical model that carries out its computations on a fine-mesh grid.
Industry:Weather
A parameterization designed to approximate the effect on the resolved flow of the gravity wave drag that would be generated by unresolved subgrid-scale topography in an atmospheric model.
Industry:Weather
A modeling approach to determine the relative importance of upwind source areas on the value of an atmospheric variable at a given height. The footprint is dependent on atmospheric stability and the surface type and is different for scalars than for higher-order turbulence statistics (such as turbulent fluxes). Footprint models use either Eulerian or Lagrangian dispersion theory. The former is usually based on idealized assumptions (e.g., horizontal homogeneity, restriction of the vertical range), whereas the latter (stochastic particle modeling) may take into account more realistic situations but is computationally much more expensive.
Industry:Weather
A narrow radar echo indicating a boundary (such as a frontal boundary, gust front, or dryline) across which a density or moisture discontinuity exists. The reflectivity is apparently explained by scattering from the refractive index gradients across the discontinuity and from insects and insect-eating birds that are concentrated along the line. See clear-air echo.
Industry:Weather
A nautical term for a violent squall of wind from mountain ravines on the Pacific side of Central America.
Industry:Weather
A nonspecific term indicating that a grid has relatively high resolution, that is, that its grid points are relatively near to each other. In the past, a grid length of less that 200 km was generally considered to be fine mesh, but with the rapid growth of computer power permitting the use of extremely high-resolution grids, the term is now used in a more contextual manner. Compare coarse-mesh grid.
Industry:Weather
A numerical method for solving differential equations in which the original equations are approximated by a set of algebraic equations that are solved on a network of discrete grid points.
Industry:Weather
