| Section S | S index | 821-829 of 1376 terms |
|---|
|
splash—A dispersion of raindrop water rebounding after reaching the earth's surface.
|
|
spline function—A function composed of polynomial pieces defined on adjoining subintervals and with continuity conditions imposed on the function and its derivatives at all points including those connecting the subintervals. The most commonly used spline function is the cubic spline that is made up of polynomial pieces of degree three, where the polynomial coefficients are determined in such a way that the composite function and its first and second derivatives are continuous at the connecting points. The graph of the cubic spline is a smooth, nonoscillatory curve. An interpolating spline is a spline function that passes through a finite set of data points.
|
|
splintering—A process from which ice splinters are produced due to the pressure buildup in the ice shell when a drop is freezing, resulting from the ice-water expansion on phase change. This causes the shell to deform and crack and eject ice splinters. It has been suggested as one of the ice multiplication mechanisms.
|
|
split cold front—A cold front in which the upper level portion of the front moves at a faster speed than the low-level portion. Eventually, the front evolves into two distinct parts rather than one continuous front. As the upper front moves ahead of the lower front, deep clouds and embedded rain bands form well ahead of the surface frontal position. See katafront.
|
|
split-explicit method—An explicit time difference approximation in which terms contributing to high frequencies of the total solution are integrated using relatively small time steps, while terms contributing to lower frequencies are integrated using relatively long time steps. See implicit time difference.
|
|
splitting convective storm—The process by which a single convective cell splits into two supercells, one dominated by cyclonic rotation and the other by anticyclonic rotation, their paths then deviating substantially from each other and other nearby convective cells. Splitting storms require strong environmental vertical wind shear, with unidirectional vertical wind shear promoting the development of mirror-image supercells, and clockwise or counterclockwise hodograph curvature in the lowest few kilometers above ground level promoting the preferred development of a cyclonic or anticyclonic supercell, respectively. The cyclonic supercell is often observed to propagate to the right of the mean wind (in the Northern Hemisphere), while the anticyclonic supercell propagates to the left of the mean wind.
|
|
spongy ice—Ice that contains liquid water; a composite of ice and liquid water. Spongy ice is a form of accretion of supercooled drops in which the heat transfer is inadequate to freeze all the water. The excess water is included within the growing ice. Spongy ice may also form during the melting of low-density accretions by the meltwater soaking into the pores.
|
|
