Temperature
Device that measures temperature
What is a thermometer?
Mass of air surrounding the Earth
What is the atmosphere?
Substance that all precipitation is made out of
What is water?
Transition zone, or border, between two air masses
What is a front?
Model of Earth's air movement which ignores its rotation and tilt
What is the single cell model?
Heat capacity of a substance per unit mass
What is specific heat?
Greenhouse gas that forms a layer in the stratosphere
What is ozone?
Rain with extremely small water droplets (less than 0.5 mm in diameter)
What is drizzle?
Large mountain range which prevents moisture from the Pacific Ocean from reaching central U.S.
What are the Rocky Mountains?
Warm water current that flows northward along the east coast of the U.S.
What is the Gulf Stream?
Transfer of heat by circulating through a fluid
What is convection?
The constant release of gases from the Earth's interior, such as from volcanoes
What is outgassing?
The maximum speed of a raindrop, when its air resistance is equal to the pull of gravity (general term, not a number)
What is terminal velocity?
Name given to the dry, mild air which travels into central U.S. from the west coast
What is Pacific Air?
Fast, narrow currents of wind usually found around the tropopause layer
What is a jet stream?
Heat energy required to change the state of a substance, such as water from liquid to gas (general term, not a number)
What is latent heat?
Tiny solid or liquid particles in the air which water vapor can condense on
What are aerosols?
The process of injecting a cloud with small particles to increase the chances of precipitation
What is cloud seeding?
Front that occurs when a cold front overtakes a warm front
What is an occluded front?
Prominent, semi-permanent region of low pressure in the north Atlantic Ocean
What is the Icelandic low?
The reflectivity of a surface (the amount of sunlight it reflects back into the atmosphere)
What is albedo?
Region of the upper atmosphere where many ions and free-flying electrons exist
What is the ionosphere?
The process by which ice crystals collide and clump together to form snowflakes
What is aggregation?
Fronts which represent a boundary between moist and dry, rather than hot and cold
What is a dryline? (AKA dew-point front)
Westward circulation of Arctic air due to higher pressures south of the North Pole
What is the Arctic Oscillation? (AKA polar vortex)