- Industry: Education
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Founded in 1876, Texas A&M University is a U.S. public and comprehensive university offering a wide variety of academic programs far beyond its original label of agricultural and mechanical trainings. It is one of the few institutions holding triple federal designations as a land-, sea- and ...
A type of coastally trapped wave motion where the velocity normal to the coast vanishes everywhere. The wave is nondispersive and propagates parallel to the shore with the speed of shallow water gravity waves, i.e. sqrt (gH). The profile perpendicular to shore either decays or grows exponentially seaward depending on whether the wave propagates with the coast to its right or left (in the northern hemisphere). For vanishing rotation, the decay or growth scale becomes infinite and the Kelvin wave reduces to an ordinary gravity wave propagating parallel to the coast. The dynamics of a Kelvin wave are such that it is exactly a linearized shallow water gravity wave in the longshore direction and exactly geostrophic in the cross-shore direction.
Industry:Earth science
A type of feedback in which a perturbation to a system causes a damping of the process, and thus opposes itself.
Industry:Earth science
A type of feedback in which a perturbation to a system causes an amplification of the process, and thus enhances itself. An example is the ice-albedo feedback mechanism.
Industry:Earth science
A type of Mode Water formed north of Madeira in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is characterized by a summer thermostad at 70-150 m depth and provides a major contribution to the formation of North Atlantic Central Water (NACW).
Industry:Earth science
A type of mode water found in the subtropical gyre in the North Pacific, and first discussed by Nakamura (1996) and Suga et al. (1997). NPCMW is distributed mainly between 30–40°N and 170°E–150°W as a 9–13°C thermostad. It is formed by wintertime deep convection north of its distribution area.
Industry:Earth science
A type of mode water found in the subtropical gyre in the North Pacific. The NPSTMW thermostad has a core temperature range of 16°–19° C centered at 150°–160° E south of the Kuroshio Extension. The formation area is centered just north of 30° N and west of 155° E. The temperature of the layer decreases eastward. Two processes contribute to the thickness of this mode water:
large winter heat loss due to advection of warm water into the region; and
cold, dry air blowing off the continents, with the tilt of isopycnals in the Kuroshio Extension and recirculation creating a bowl of warm water between the Extension and the recirculation.
Industry:Earth science
A type of radar originally developed to detect military targets far beyond the optical horizon. Radio waves in the 5 to 28 MHz range are reflected from the ionosphere and reach up to 3500 km in one hop. Properties of the ocean surface are extracted from the energy backscattered from the ocean surface. Properties that can be measured include surface wind direction, radial surface currents, sea state, surface wind speed, and more.
Industry:Earth science
A type of regionally modified Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) which, along with several other types of regionally modified and previously defined types of CDW, is now usually defined as one of several regional types of a more general water mass called Modified Circumpolar Deep Water.
Industry:Earth science
A type of sea ice defined by the WMO as: A later stage of freezing than frazil ice when the crystals have coagulated to form a soupy layer on the surface. Grease ice reflects little light, giving the surface a matt appearance. This behaves like a viscous fluid.
Industry:Earth science
A type of sea ice defined by the WMO as: A thin elastic crust of ice, easily bending on waves and swell and under pressure, thrusting in a pattern of interlocking “fingers.” Has a matt surface and is up to 10 cm in thickness. May be subdivided into dark nilas and light nilas. The dark nilas is less than 5 cm thick and very dark, while the light nilas is 5–10 cm thick and reflects proportionately more light, depending on its thickness.
Industry:Earth science
