Geography Vocabulary: Weather, Terrain, and Coastal Features
Total Solar Insolation: The total solar insolation received by Earth’s surface.
Isobars: Lines joining points with the same pressure.
Isohyets: Lines joining points with the same precipitation.
Coastal Ocean: The ocean side of the coast, from low to high tide.
Plateau: A large area, slightly hilly, with an altitude above 300 meters above the neighboring regions of different origins (volcanic, sedimentary, tectonic erosion).
Peninsula: Land surrounded on all sides by sea, except for an isthmus that connects it to the mainland.
Pressure: Forces exerted by the weight of the atmosphere on a surface. It is measured in millibars (barometer).
Rainfall Series: General rainfall pattern in rainfall.
Thermal Regime Series: Overall air temperatures, based on monthly average temperatures.
Alpine Terrain: Terrain originated during the Tertiary Era during the Alpine Orogeny, such as the Pyrenees and the Betic Cordilleras.
Hercynian Relief: Reliefs formed in the Hercynian orogeny (Primary Era), such as the Hesperian Massif, Aquitaine, the Ebro, Betic-Rif, and Catalan-Balear.
Thermal Amplitude: Variation between the average temperature of the warmest month and the coldest month.
Anticyclone: A high-pressure area surrounded by lower pressure. The wind flows clockwise. Produces dry and stable weather.
Archipelago: A group of islands arranged together.
Bay: An area of the coast that is rather wide and deep where a stretch of sea enters the land.
Stormy Zone: An area of low pressure surrounded by higher pressure. The wind flows counter-clockwise. Produces unstable weather.
Brisas: Coastal local wind that blows from sea to land during daylight hours.
Continental Trend: The tendency of large continental areas of middle and high latitudes to acquire a wide annual temperature variation.
Mountain Range: A group of mountains joined together.
Geological Fault: A rupture of the earth’s crust where fractured blocks are spaced due to the action of tectonic forces on a rigid rocky surface.
Polar Front: The surface that separates tropical air masses from polar air masses in the temperate zone. Experiences waves that give rise to storms of two fronts, warm and cold, separated by a warm sector.
Aridity Index: The relationship between heat and moisture in a given space.
Windward Area: The windy side of a relief.
Depression: A structural sedimentary basin formed by subsidence of the earth’s crust in which different types of materials are deposited.
Humidity: The quantity of water vapor contained in the air. Can be absolute (the total) or relative (the current amount compared to the maximum it can hold).
Isothermal Lines: Lines connecting points of equal temperature.
Glacial Lake: A large body of water with relative depth produced by the action of glacial ice creating digging buckets that fill with water.
Marsh: Low and marshy land that is flooded by the sea.
Karst Morphology: A type of modeling that occurs on limestone.
Continental Shelf: The seafloor with a weak slope from the coast and 200 meters deep, where the emphasis of the slope marks the beginning of the continental slope.
Rainfall: Water on the surface.
Leeward Side: The side of the mountain that is not exposed to the wind.
Glacial Depression: A glacial valley formed by erosion of a glacier.
Plains: Plains formed in the primary era as a result of the devastation by the erosion of mountain ranges encountered in the Hercynian orogeny.