| Section A | A index | 201-209 of 917 terms |
|---|
|
adret—The slope (usually equatorward, or southward in the Northern Hemisphere) of a mountain that faces into the sun. The term is originally and most often used in referring to mountains in the Alps. Tilted toward the sun, an adret is characterized by higher temperatures, a longer growing season, less snow cover and a shorter duration of snow cover, and a higher timber line and snow line than the shaded side (the ubac).
|
|
adsorption isotherm—A boundary on a phase diagram that expresses the partitioning of a compound between solid and aqueous phases. It is the isothermal equilibrium relationship between the concentration of a compound sorbed to the solid phase and the concentration of the same compound in the aqueous solution in contact with the solid phase.
|
|
adsorption—The adhesion of a thin film of liquid or gas onto a solid substance. The solid does not chemically combine with the adsorbed substance. See sorption; compare absorption.
|
|
Advanced Baseline Imager—(Abbreviated ABI.) ABI is a 16 channel high-resolution imaging radiometer being designed for the GOES-R series of satellites covering visible, short, mid- and long-wavelength infrared spectral regions. The visible and near-infrared channels will provide 500 m (one channel only) or 1 km resolution imagery at nadir, while the remaining infrared channels will have a nadir resolution of 2 km.
|
|
Advanced Earth Observing Satellite—(Abbreviated ADEOS.) A Japanese remote sensing satellite designed to collect worldwide environmental data from a sophisticated suite of sensors. The core sensors on ADEOS are an advanced visible and near-infrared radiometer and an ocean color and temperature sensor. Additional instruments on ADEOS include the NASA scatterometer, a total ozone mapping spectrometer, an instrument to measure the polarization and directionality of the earth's reflectance, an interferometric monitor for greenhouse gases, an improved limb atmospheric spectrometer, and a retroreflector in space. ADEOS was launched on 17 August 1996, into a sun-synchronous orbit. The satellite failed on 29 June 1997, but will be replaced by other satellites in the ADEOS series.
|
|
Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit—(Abbreviated AMSU.) An advanced version of the MSU on POES satellites that will replace the older MSU and SSU instruments, starting with NOAA-15 launched on 13 May 1998.
|
|
Advanced TIROS-N—(Abbreviated ATN.) See TIROS.
|
|
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer—(Abbreviated AVHRR.) A sensor carried on board NOAA satellites used in meteorology and oceanography for measurements of cloud cover and sea surface temperature. The sampling rate is 2048 pixels per scan, with a scan angle of 55.4° off nadir and a pixel resolution of 1.1 km over five spectral bands. The spectral windows of the five AVHRR channels are:
|
|
advection fog—1. A type of fog caused by the advection of moist air over a cold surface, and the consequent cooling of that air to below its dewpoint. A very common advection fog is that caused by moist air over a cold body of water (sea fog). 2. Sometimes applied to steam fog.
|
|
advection frost—The occurrence of frost as a result of the horizontal transport (advection) of a cold air mass with air temperature below 0°C. This type of frost is responsible for causing damage to agricultural areas of south Florida and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas during cold polar outbreaks. Compare radiation fog.
|
|
