User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox

From Citizendium
< User:Milton Beychok
Revision as of 22:46, 25 March 2012 by imported>Milton Beychok
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Atmospheric science is the umbrella term for the study of the atmosphere — the blanket of air covering the Earth. It is a relatively new discipline that is concerned with the composition, structure and evolution of the atmosphere as well as its processes and how those processes interrelate with other systems.[1][2][3]

To the extent that atmospheric science focuses primarily on the Earth's atmosphere, it can be regarded as a subfield of the Earth sciences, each of which is a particular synthesis of the fundamentals of physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics and thermodynamics.

Atmospheric science includes these primary subdisciplines of:[4]

As of 2011, about 34 percent of atmospheric scientists in the United States are employed by the U.S. federal government, mostly in the National Weather Service.

References

  1. Peter V. Hobbs and John M. Wallace (2006). Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey, 2nd Edition. Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-732951-X. 
  2. A. Chandrasekar (2010). Basics of Atmospheric Science. PHI Learning. ISBN 8120340221. 
  3. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11 Edition: Atmospheric Scientists
  4. Duscovering the Atmospheric Sciences, From the website of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)