Unit 1 Fundamentals of Environmental Sciences - Meteorological Scales | What is Meteorology?

Meteorology is the scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting. Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events which illuminate and are explained by the science of meteorology. Microscale deals with events that take place, as the term implies, on a very small scale. Technically, it happens in an area below one kilometer in area. At these scales, meteorologists would cover everything from a cloud over a town to even winds that are blowing leaves around a building. Mesoscale deals with anything that’s between 5 kilometer to several hundred kilometer, i.e. between larger than a town/city and the size of a US state. Thunderstorms arguably fit the definition, along with sea breeze events. Synoptic deals with scales exceeding several hundred kilometer. A tropical cyclone can be several hundreds of kilometer across, so they “fit” in this scale. Extratropical cyclones and large fronts also fit this profile. Global- As the name implies, they affect large parts of the globe. Think of the large pressure cells that result in storms at the equator and dry areas in 30*N and S. #evs4ntanet #environmentalscience #scalesofmeteorology #meteorology