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American Meteorological Society
Industria: 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, ...
A pressure-operated switching device used in a radiosonde. In operation, the expansion of an aneroid capsule causes an electrical contact to scan a radiosonde commutator composed of conductors separated by insulators. Each switching operation corresponds to a particular pressure level. The contact of an insulator or a conductor determines whether temperature, humidity, or reference signal will be transmitted.
Industry:Weather
A pressure-operated switching device used in a radiosonde. In operation, the expansion of an aneroid capsule causes an electrical contact to scan a radiosonde commutator composed of conductors separated by insulators. Each switching operation corresponds to a particular pressure level. The contact of an insulator or a conductor determines whether temperature, humidity, or reference signal will be transmitted.
Industry:Weather
In Scotland, the sudden onset of a storm; sudden downpour of rain or hail with wind.
Industry:Weather
The rapid and chaotic motion of particles suspended in a fluid at rest as a consequence of fluctuations in the rate at which fluid molecules collide with the particles. On average, the particles experience zero net force, but deviations from this average give rise to Brownian motion, so named because it reputedly was observed first in pollen grains by the botanist Robert Brown. Whether Brown actually observed what we now call Brownian motion has been questioned on the grounds that his grains were so large that their fluctuating motion would have been imperceptible. But even if Brownian motion can ever be shown not to have been observed by Brown, his name is likely to be forever attached to this motion, especially since mathematicians have generalized this term to a broad class of stochastic processes. Brownian motion is more than just a scientific curiosity, having played a key role in establishing the reality of molecules and in presenting a convincing argument for the kinetic theory of gases.
Industry:Weather
A law describing the relationship of the horizontal wind direction in the atmosphere to the pressure distribution; if one stands with the back to the wind, the pressure to the left is lower than to the right in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the relation is reversed. This law was formulated in 1857 by the Dutch meteorologist Buys Ballot and is a qualitative statement of the geostrophic wind relation.
Industry:Weather
Any migratory cyclone more or less associated with strong baroclinity of the atmosphere, evidenced on synoptic charts by temperature gradients in the constant-pressure surfaces, vertical wind shear, tilt of pressure troughs with height, and concentration of solenoids in the frontal surface near the ground. Baroclinic disturbances play an important role in atmospheric energy conversion from potential energy to kinetic energy. Compare barotropic disturbance.
Industry:Weather
An instrument that measures the intensity of radiant energy by employing a thermally sensitive electrical resistor; a type of actinometer. In meteorological applications, two identical, blackened, thermally sensitive electrical resistors are used in a Wheatstone bridge circuit. Radiation is allowed to fall on one of the elements, causing a change in its resistance. The change is a measure of the intensity of the radiation.
Industry:Weather
(Abbreviated BWER. ) A nearly vertical channel of weak radar echo, surrounded on the sides and top by significantly stronger echo. The BWER, sometimes called a vault, is related to the strong updraft in a severe convective storm that carries newly formed hydrometeors to high levels before they can grow to radar- detectable sizes. BWERs are typically found at midlevels of convective storms, 3–10 km above the ground, and are a few kilometers in horizontal diameter. See also weak echo region.
Industry:Weather
Perturbations generated by the breeding method. In complex physical systems the bred vectors depend on the perturbation amplitude, which is the only free parameter in the breeding technique. For example, linearly fast-growing perturbations such as convective instabilities do not amplify after reaching a certain amplitude since they become nonlinearly saturated (i.e., other processes prevent them from growing any further). The bred vectors are primarily used as initial perturbations in ensemble forecasting and for studying the instabilities of the atmosphere.
Industry:Weather
A law describing the relationship of the horizontal wind direction in the atmosphere to the pressure distribution; if one stands with the back to the wind, the pressure to the left is lower than to the right in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the relation is reversed. This law was formulated in 1857 by the Dutch meteorologist Buys Ballot and is a qualitative statement of the geostrophic wind relation.
Industry:Weather