ENVIRSC 1A03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Climatology, Lightning
8 Jun 2013
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Document Summary
The atmosphere is a mixture of gas molecules, microscopically small suspended particles of solid and liquid, and falling precipitations. Meteorology is the study of the atmosphere and the processes (such as cloud formation, lightning, and wind movement) that causes what we refer to as the weather . Weatheris distinct from climate in that the former deals with short-term phenomena and the latter with long-term patterns. Climatology concerns itself with the same elements of the atmosphere that meteorology does but on a different time scale: the main component of climatology is to understand the average values of the atmospheric characteristics across earth"s surface. It incorporates the values of weather extremes, such as the lowest and highest recorded temperatures, maximum one-day or one hour rainfall amounts, and the laargest snow accumulation. Its motion over large areas must be prmiarily horizantal: with some very notable exceptions, horizantal wind speeds are typically a thousand times greater.
