airmass

See also: air mass

English

Alternative forms

• air mass

Etymology

air +‎ mass

Noun

airmass (plural airmasses)

1. (physics, meteorology) a widespread body of air, the properties of which can be identified as: (a) having been established while that air was situated over a particular region of the Earth's surface (airmass source region) and (b) undergoing specific modifications while in transit away from the source region. An air mass is often defined as a widespread body of air that is approximately homogeneous in its horizontal extent, particularly with reference to temperature and moisture distribution; in addition, the vertical temperature and moisture variations are approximately the same over its horizontal extent.
2. (astronomy) The amount of air through which light from a celestial object passes, normalized to 1 for an object at zenith.
   • 2007, Th. Ratzka et al., “High spatial resolution mid-infrared observations of the low-mass young star TW Hydrae”, in Astronomy and Astrophysics, volume 471, →DOI:

     Unfortunately, the extinction is very sensitive to the airmass […]

Translations

a body of air with uniform characteristics

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 气团 (zh) (qìtuán)

• Dutch: lucht massa
• Finnish: ilmamassa (fi)
• French: mass d’air
• German: luftmasse
• Hungarian: légtömeg (hu)
• Indonesian: massa udara (id)
• Malay: jisim udara
• Maori: hau whakapipi
• Portuguese: massa de ar
• Russian: масса воздуха (massa vozduxa)
• Spanish: masa de aire
• Swedish: luft massa
• Turkish: hava kütlesi (tr)

See also

• air mass classification
• airmass source region

Source: FM 3-6 Field Behavior of NBC Agents.

Anagrams

• Marissa, Massari