- Settore: Earth science
- Number of terms: 10770
- Number of blossaries: 1
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The UK charity dedicated to the protection of the marine environment and its wildlife.
The boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, usually characterized by an abrupt change of lapse rate. The change is in the direction of increased atmospheric stability from regions below to regions above the tropopause. Its height varies from 15 to 20 km in the tropics to about 10 km in polar regions. In polar regions in winter it is often difficult or impossible to determine just where the tropopause lies, since under some conditions there is no abrupt change in lapse rate at any height.
Industry:Earth science
The breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier, an ice shelf, or an iceberg.
Industry:Earth science
The cold ocean current flowing north along the coasts of Chile and Peru. It is one of the swiftest of ocean currents. The Peru current originates where part of the water that flows toward the east across the subantarctic Pacific Ocean is deflected toward the north as it approaches South America. The northern limit of the current can be placed a little south of the equator, where the flow turns toward the west, joining the south equatorial current . Also called Humboldt current. The southern portion of the Peru current is sometimes called the Chile current .
Industry:Earth science
The common unit of depth in the ocean, equal to six feet. It is also sometimes used in expressing horizontal distances, in which case 100 fathoms make one cable or very nearly one-tenth nautical mile .
Industry:Earth science
The cyclical rise and fall of the water level in the oceans and other large bodies of water that is caused by the interaction of the rotating Earth with various forces, principally the gravitational attraction of the Moon and the Sun. Extra information on the Earth's Tides.
Industry:Earth science
The declivity from the outer edge of the continental shelf or continental borderland into greater depths.
Industry:Earth science
The development of an infinitessimal disturbance in a mean flow field that grows by drawing energy from the mean flow.
Industry:Earth science
The effective change in the acceleration of gravity acting on one fluid in contact with a fluid of different density due to buoyancy forces. Explicitly, the reduced gravity is g'=g \Delta\rho/\rho_0, in which g is the acceleration of gravity, \rho_0 is the reference density, and \Delta\rho is the difference in density between the two fluids.
Industry:Earth science
The flow of heat across a surface of unit area in a unit amount of time; commonly expressed in units of cal/cm2-sec or W/(M2-A).
Industry:Earth science
