Atmospheric science

This group is for those interested in all aspects of the science of the atmosphere (of primarily Earth but other planets as well) and its interaction with planetary, space, biological and human environments; encompassing the disciplines of meteorology, climatology, space weather or the solar-terrestrial environment, aeronomy, atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, kinematics, geosciences and oceanography, hydrology, hydrometeorology, and biometeorology. Some sub-disciplines of meteorology are mesoscale meteorology (or “mesometeorology”), microscale meteorology (or micrometeorology), dynamical meteorology, synoptic meteorology, operational meteorology, and research meteorology.

Atmospheric science may also involve computer science, data collection, data assimilation, data analysis, remote sensing, in-situ measurements, chaos, emergence, complexity, systems science, electromagnetism, optics, and acoustics.

More specifically, the natural and physical science of the atmosphere includes weather analysis and forecasting, climate change, global warming, radio propagation, aurorae, numerical weather prediction, and meteorological instrumentation.

Meteorological phenomena include wind, cloud (clouds), precipitation, fog, rain, snow, hail, sleet, ice pellets, ice, graupel, blizzard (blizzards), ice storm (ice storms), storm (storms), thunderstorm (thunderstorms), lightning, thunder, tornado (tornadoes), hurricane (hurricanes), cyclone (cyclones), anticyclone (anticyclones), typhoon (typhoons), flood (floods), pollution, heat, cold, drought, weathering, and erosion.

Obeying the laws of physics and chemistry, the primary variables are temperature (heat), pressure, and moisture. The atmosphere consists of the layers of the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere, as well as the ionosphere and magnetosphere. Interactions of the atmosphere occur with the extraterrestrial and stellar environment (astronomy), hydrosphere, geosphere, pedosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere.

The atmospheric sciences are highly multi- and interdisciplinary and the meta-terms geophysics, planetary science, or earth system science may cover all the fields and interactions. The complexity of the atmosphere and therefore the difficulty in prognosticating the weather are summed up well by Bob Ryan in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (1982):

“Imagine a rotating sphere that is 12,800 kilometers (8000 miles) in diameter, has a bumpy surface, is surrounded by a 40-kilometer-deep mixture of different gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and is heated, along with its surrounding gases, by a nuclear reactor 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away. Imagine also that this sphere is revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during one part of the revolution and other locations are heated during another part of the revolution. And imagine that this mixture of gases continually receives inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections. Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture, you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two, or more days into the future. This is essentially the task encountered day by day by a weather forecaster.”