- 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 general term for any ground surface exhibiting a discernibly ordered, more- or-less symmetrical, morphological pattern of ground and, when present, vegetation.
Industry:Weather
A function composed of polynomial pieces defined on adjoining subintervals and with continuity conditions imposed on the function and its derivatives at all points including those connecting the subintervals. The most commonly used spline function is the cubic spline that is made up of polynomial pieces of degree three, where the polynomial coefficients are determined in such a way that the composite function and its first and second derivatives are continuous at the connecting points. The graph of the cubic spline is a smooth, nonoscillatory curve. An interpolating spline is a spline function that passes through a finite set of data points.
Industry:Weather
A function describing the dependence of scattered radiance on scattering angle. The phase function is a dimensionless and normalized version of the scattering function, such that the integral of the phase function over 4π steradians equals 4π. The phase function for a given wavelength is a property of the medium, not of the incident radiation, provided the incident radiation is unpolarized. As the size parameter of a scatterer increases, its phase function becomes more anisotropic, with progressively more of the scattered radiance being concentrated into a diffraction peak. See'' also'' Rayleigh phase function, Henyey–Greenstein phase function.
Industry:Weather
A formula that relates successive members of a sequence of terms or formulas to earlier members of the sequence, so that all members may be determined in order.
Industry:Weather
A free, unmanned balloon instrumented and/or observed for the purpose of obtaining a sounding of the atmosphere. See balloon for list of types.
Industry:Weather
A front that may form within a baroclinic cold air mass, which itself is separated from a warm air mass by a primary frontal system. The most common type is the secondary cold front.
Industry:Weather
A form of eddy viscosity or eddy diffusivity that varies with eddy size. For a spectrum of turbulent eddy sizes there is a spectrum of diffusivities. By integrating over all eddy sizes and diffusivities, the total effect of turbulence can be approximated. This is a form of nonlocal turbulence closure and can be shown to be related to transilient turbulence theory.
Industry:Weather
A function characterizing the angular distribution of scattered radiation in terms of the scattering angle; usually used in its normalized form as the phase function.
Industry:Weather
A frost-preventive measure used in orchards. Properly, it means the production of heavy smoke from the burning of fossil fuels intended to prevent radiational cooling, but the term is applied to both heating and smoke production.
Industry:Weather
