- Industry: Education
- Number of terms: 34386
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
Founded in 1876, Texas A&M University is a U.S. public and comprehensive university offering a wide variety of academic programs far beyond its original label of agricultural and mechanical trainings. It is one of the few institutions holding triple federal designations as a land-, sea- and ...
An average circulation feature or cell defined to consist of the zonal-mean meridional and vertical velocities. In the tropics and subtropics this mean meridional circulation cell is known as the Hadley cell and in midlatitudes as the Ferrel cell.
Industry:Earth science
A zone extending from the upper limit of a beach to the offshore. In terms of the beach profile, it consists of (progressing seawards) the backshore, foreshore and inshore. In terms of the wave and current regimes, it consists of (again progressing seawards) the swash zone, surf zone and breaker zone.
Industry:Earth science
One of three major ecological groups into which marine organisms are divided, the other two being the benthos and the plankton. Nekton are strongly swimming pelagic animals such as fish, some crustaceans, cephalopods, and whales which are capable of progressing against most water currents.
Industry:Earth science
Living in coastal waters as opposed to living upon the high seas, i.e. oceanic. A division of the pelagic portion of the ocean that overlies the continental shelf.
Industry:Earth science
In climate modeling this is a method for obtaining improved regional climate change predictions by the use of a spatial hierarchy of simulation models. Output from GCM simulations is used to provide initial and driving lateral boundary conditions for high resolution regional climate model (RegCM) simulations. There is no feedback from the ReGCM to the GCM. Different nesting techniques have been used, ranging from the standard technique of directly interpolating output from the coarse grid to the fine grid to the more sophisticated technique of spectral nesting. In the latter method the GCM forces the low wavenumber component of fields in the regional domain while the RegCM calculates the high wavenumber components.
Industry:Earth science
A density for which three properties should ideally hold:
* it should be constant on approximate neutral surfaces;
* its horizontal gradients should coincide with the horizontal gradients of the in situ density; and
* its vertical gradient should be proportional to the static stability of the water column.
The rub is that no variable can satisfy all these conditions in the ocean, i.e. the concept is mathematically ill-defined. It is, though, possible to define and use approximate neutral densities that constitute a compromise between these properties.
Industry:Earth science
A three-dimensional path in the ocean defined such that no buoyancy forces act on a water parcel when it is moved a small distance along the path. Neutral trajectories are mathematically well defined but do not generally coincide with particle trajectories.
Industry:Earth science
Photosynthesis due to the uptake of nitrate. It is so-called because ocean circulation is the only source of nitrate to the euphotic zone and, as such, the nitrate can be thought of as newly available to phytoplankton.
Industry:Earth science
A program to facilitate the development of an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional program focused on ecological and socio-econonomic-human health issues in the temperate waters of the Austral Chilean Coast and Inland Sea.
Industry:Earth science
A special program in the South Atlantic and Southern Oceans consisting of measurements from coastal tide gauges and bottom pressure stations, along with an ongoing research program in satellite altimetry. ACCLAIM was the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory's main contribution to WOCE and now provides data for CLIVAR, GLOSS and PSMSL.
The coastal tide gauge portion of ACCLAIM took place in two phases. In Phase I from 1983, measurements at coastal tide gauge sites were sub-surface pressure (SSP) measurements rather than sea level (where SSP is defined as the total, measured pressure recorded by a sub-surface pressure transducer, a measurement including the atmospheric as well as the water column pressure). These data were acquired with different sensors and with different pressre integration periods. Phase II, which started in early 1993, involved replacing the gauges at several sites with `B gauges' that recorded SSP, air pressure and sea level. These gauges have precise datum control and are used to provide long term sea level change data to the PSMSL.
Industry:Earth science
