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acid rain
Precipitation with a pH of less than about 5.0, which is the value produced when naturally occurring carbon dioxide, sulphate, and nitrogen oxides dissolve into cloud droplets. The effects of ...
Agriculture and Climate
The basic industry that produces natural fiber and food for human consumption began between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago in the region now known as the Middle East. Hunters and ...
Amazonia
The Amazon Basin of South America. It covers an area of 5.8 million square kilometres of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, and is dominated by grassland, wetland, shrubland, lakes, and tropical forests.
Aqua
A NASA polar-orbiting satellite, part of the Earth Observing System, the second to be launched (after the Terra satellite) on 4 May 2002. It is primarily designed to monitor the Earth's hydrological ...
Atmosphere Dynamics
By atmosphere dynamics is meant the set of physical processes that sets the atmosphere into motion and causes those motions to evolve. Apart from the gravitational tide, which is not ...
Charles Warren Thornthwaite
(1889–1963)An American climatologist who devised the system of climate classification that bears his name. Thornthwaite taught on the faculties of the Universities of Oklahoma (1927–43) and Maryland ...
cloud
A visible, dense mass of water droplets and/or ice crystals, suspended in the air, and generally forming when air is forced to rise: at a front, over mountains, or because of convection. Clouds ...
Coevolution of Climate and Life
Climate influences—and is influenced by—life on Earth. They have coevolved. Although many details are unknown, we do know that relatively fixed supplies of certain elements, or nutrients, that are ...
cryosphere
That part of the Earth where the surface is frozen, comprising the area covered by ice sheets and glaciers, permafrost regions, and sea areas covered by ice, at least in winter.
drought
A relative term denoting a period during which rainfall is either totally absent or substantially lower than usual for the area in question, so that there is a resulting shortage of water for human ...
ecosystem services
Processes or materials such as clean water, energy, climate regulation, and nutrient cycling that are naturally provided by ecosystems. Also known as ecological services.
energy source
Any material that is used to produce energy, including fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas), nuclear (fission and fusion), and renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydroelectric).
flood
Floods occur when peak discharge exceeds channel capacity, and this may be brought about naturally by intense precipitation (Wilson and Rashid (2005) Canad. Geogr./Géog. canad. 49, 1), snow- and ...
freezing rain
Rain that falls as liquid droplets, but which freezes on contact with the ground, trees, or other objects that are below 0 °C, creating a layer of glaze.
glaciation
1 The process by which supercooled water droplets change into ice crystals in the top of a cumulonimbus cloud as it reaches the calvus stage. The cloud may subsequently develop capillatus features or ...
Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment
(GEWEX)A series of projects under the World Climate Research Programme for the investigation of atmospheric radiation, boundary-layer, cloud, hydrological, and precipitation processes. Specific ...
greenhouse effect
The trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the ...
groundwater
All water found under the surface of the ground which is not chemically combined with any minerals present, but not including underground streams. The GroundWaterSoftware.com newsletter is really ...
hail
Form of precipitation comprising ice in the shape of balls or irregular particles (hailstones), whose concentric structure indicates a growth by coalescence and freezing of supercooled water drops. ...
Humid Climate
The great diversity of the world's climates encompasses a wide spectrum of local peculiarities resulting from a complex interaction of latitudinal, longitudinal, continental, oceanic, orographic, ...
