- Branche: Weather
- Number of terms: 60695
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The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals, ...
Pertaining to electromagnetic radiation capable of initiating photochemical reactions, as in photography or the fading of pigments. Because of the particularly strong action of ultraviolet radiation on photochemical processes, the term has come to be almost synonymous with ultraviolet, as in “actinic rays. ”
Industry:Weather
The spherically integrated radiation flux in the earth's atmosphere that originates from the sun, including the direct beam and any scattered components. This radiation is responsible for initiating the chemistry of the atmosphere.
Industry:Weather
The general name for any instrument used to measure the intensity of radiant energy, particularly that of the sun. Actinometers may be classified, accordingly to the quantities that they measure, in the following manner: 1) pyrheliometer, which measures the intensity of direct solar radiation; 2) pyranometer, which measures global radiation (the combined intensity of direct solar radiation and diffuse sky radiation); and 3) pyrgeometer, which measures the effective terrestrial radiation. See actinometry, bolometer, dosimeter, photometer, radiometer; compare sunshine recorder.
Industry:Weather
A term for the measurement of radiation, originally more general, but now used mainly to describe photochemical techniques of measuring ultraviolet radiation by chemical actinometers.
Industry:Weather
A radioactive gas, symbol An; an inert gaseous element that is an isotope of radon and thoron. Actinon is a member of the uranium–actinium family of radioactive elements. Its radioactive half-life is extremely short, only 3. 92 s, and its parent atoms (actinium x) are comparatively rare in the earth's crust, so actinon is considerably less important as an agency of atmospheric ionization than are radon and thoron.
Industry:Weather
(Also called transition state theory. ) Theory of chemical reaction that relates the rate of reaction to an equilibrium between the reactants and an activated complex or transition state, which is a maximum energy configuration of the reactants as they proceed along the reaction coordinate.
Industry:Weather
