Question | Answer |
the volume of pore space available within rock or soil | porosity |
water contained in the open spaces or pores of soil and rock | groundwater |
layer of permeable rock through which water flows freely | aquifer |
Water found on the surface of the Earth; includes rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans | Surface water |
Area of land that drains water from higher land to lower land and into a stream; also called a drainage basin | Watershed |
Transfer of thermal energy in a fluid (liquid or gas), in which warmer fluid rises and cooler fluid sinks | Convection |
Description of how well a rock or sediment lets water pass through | Permeability |
Instrument used to measure wind speed | Anemometer |
Instrument used to measure air pressure | Barometer |
Instrument used to measure humidity | psychrometer |
A huge, slowly-spinning tropical storm that forms over water and has winds of at least 110 km/h or 74 mph | Hurricane |
Small, destructive, whirling fast-moving storm that forms over land | Tornado |
transfer of energy that occurs when molecules bump into each other | conduction |
energy transferred by waves or rays | radiation |
movement of air from sea to land during the day when cooler air from above the water moves over the land forcing the heated, less dense air above the land to rise | sea breeze |
movement of air from land to sea at night; created when cooler, denser aire from the land forces up warmer air over the sea | land breeze |
large body of air that has the same characteristics of temperature and moisture content as the part of Earth's surface over which it formed. | airmass |
a measure of the weight of the atmosphere per unit of area on Earth's surface | air pressure |
boundary between two air masses with different temperatures, density, or moisture; can be cold, warm, stationary, and occluded | front |
leading edge of a warm air mass moving in to replace a cold air mass | warm front |
leading edge of a cold air mass that is pushing a warm air mass | cold front |
boundary between two air masses where the masses are not moving | stationary front |
formed in the atmosphere when a cold front overtakes a warm front, capturing the warm air mass between the two cold air masses | occluded front |
in the polar regions, cold, dense air sinks and moves away from the poles, Earth's rotation deflects this wind from east to west | polar easterlies |
a mid-latitude (30° N and S) global wind; Earth's rotation deflects air from west to east as air moves toward the polar regions | prevailing westerlies |
global wind that blows nearly all the time in tropical areas | trade winds |
low air pressure band near the equator where there is little wind | doldrums |
conditions in the atmosphere at a specific time and place; tetermined by ... | weather |