acceleration: A change in the speed or direction of some object.
aerosol: (adj. aerosolized) A tiny solid or liquid particle suspended in air or as a gas. Aerosols can be natural, such as fog or gas from volcanic eruptions, or artificial, such as smoke from burning fossil fuels.
Atlantic: One of the world’s five oceans, it is second in size only to the Pacific. It separates Europe and Africa to the east from North and South America to the west.
atmosphere: The envelope of gases surrounding Earth, another planet or a moon.
biomass: Matter that contains carbon and can be used as a fuel, especially in a power station for the generation of electricity. Plants are a kind of biomass.
black carbon: Particles of carbon that are released when fossil fuels, wood or other carbon-based materials are burned.
carbon: A chemical element that is the physical basis of all life on Earth. Carbon exists freely as graphite and diamond. It is an important part of coal, limestone and petroleum, and is capable of self-bonding, chemically, to form an enormous number of chemically, biologically and commercially important molecules.
climate: The weather conditions that typically exist in one area, in general, or over a long period.
cloud: A plume of molecules or particles, such as water droplets, that move under the action of an outside force, such as wind, radiation or water currents. (in atmospheric science) A mass of airborne water droplets and ice crystals that travel as a plume, usually high in Earth’s atmosphere. Its movement is driven by winds.
condensation: The process of moisture in the air turning into a liquid as it comes into contact with a very cold surface. Or the term can refer to the liquid water that condenses out of the air.
disperse: To spread, often widely. Plants, for example, disperse their seeds to far off sites by allowing them to ride the winds or survive being eaten by animals that travel great distances.
eruption: (in geoscience) The sudden bursting or spraying of hot material from deep inside a planet or moon and out through its surface. Volcanic eruptions on Earth usually send hot lava, hot gases or ash into the air and across surrounding land. In colder parts of the solar system, eruptions often involve liquid water spraying out through cracks in an icy crust. This happens on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that is covered in ice.
fossil fuel: Any fuel — such as coal, petroleum (crude oil) or natural gas — that has developed within the Earth over millions of years from the decayed remains of bacteria, plants or animals.
greenhouse gas: A gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing heat. Carbon dioxide is one example of a greenhouse gas.
hurricane: A tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and has winds of 119 kilometers (74 miles) per hour or greater. When such a storm occurs in the Pacific Ocean, people refer to it as a typhoon.
NASA: Short for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Created in 1958, this U.S. agency has become a leader in space research and in stimulating public interest in space exploration. It was through NASA that the United States sent people into orbit and ultimately to the moon. It also has sent research craft to study planets and other celestial objects in our solar system.
particle: A minute amount of something.
plume: (in geology) Fluids (air, water or magma typically) that move, largely intact, in a feather-like shape over long distances.
radiation: (in physics) One of the three major ways that energy is transferred. (The other two are conduction and convection.) In radiation, electromagnetic waves carry energy from one place to another. Unlike conduction and convection, which need material to help transfer the energy, radiation can transfer energy across empty space.
rainforest: Dense forest rich in biodiversity found in tropical areas with consistent heavy rainfall.
reflective: Adjective that refers to the ability of something to reflect light strongly. Such objects can produce a strong bright glare when sunlight bounces off of them. Examples of reflective objects include a mirror, a smooth metal can, a car window, a glass bottle, ice, snow or the watery surface of a lake.
salt: A compound made by combining an acid with a base (in a reaction that also creates water). The ocean contains many different salts — collectively called “sea salt.” Common table salt is a made of sodium and chlorine.
satellite: A moon orbiting a planet or a vehicle or other manufactured object that orbits some celestial body in space.
sea: An ocean (or region that is part of an ocean). Unlike lakes and streams, seawater — or ocean water — is salty.
simulation: (v. simulate) An analysis, often made using a computer, of some conditions, functions or appearance of a physical system. A computer program would do this by using mathematical operations that can describe the system and how it might change over time or in response to different anticipated situations.
solar: Having to do with the sun or the radiation it emits. It comes from sol, Latin for sun.
sulfate: A family of chemical compounds that are related to sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Sulfates occur naturally in drinking water.
trade winds: These are winds that blow steadily towards the equator. In the northern hemisphere, they arrive from the northeast. In the southern hemisphere, they move in from the southeast (especially at sea). Two bands of these winds circle the globe.
volcano: A place on Earth’s crust that opens, allowing magma and gases to spew out from underground reservoirs of molten material. The magma rises through a system of pipes or channels, sometimes spending time in chambers where it bubbles with gas and undergoes chemical transformations. This plumbing system can become more complex over time. This can result in a change, over time, to the chemical composition of the lava as well. The surface around a volcano’s opening can grow into a mound or cone shape as successive eruptions send more lava onto the surface, where it cools into hard rock.