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Minto mine (Yukon)
The Minto mine is a copper-gold-silver mine in central Yukon, about 240 kilometers northwest of Whitehorse, which produced copper concentrate from 2007 until its abandonment in May 2023.
Miocene
The Miocene is a geological epoch from 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago, the first epoch of the Neogene, when grasslands spread and the first apes appeared.
Miocene Climatic Optimum
The Miocene Climatic Optimum was a middle Miocene warm interval from about 16.9 to 14.7 million years ago, with global temperatures 3 to 4 °C warmer than today.
Miralga impact structure
Miralga impact structure is a deeply eroded meteorite impact structure on North Pole Dome in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, identified by shatter cones in Archean basalts.
Mirambel Formation
Mirambel Formation (Formación Mirambel), a Barremian Lower Cretaceous unit in the Maestrazgo Basin, Iberian Chain, NE Spain; about 200 m of alternating alluvial and lacustrine facies, rich in dinosaur bones, tracks, and eggshells, including Portellsaurus sosbaynati.
MIROC (climate model)
MIROC, the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, is a Japanese coupled atmosphere–ocean climate model developed by NIES, the University of Tokyo, and JAMSTEC, contributing to CMIP and IPCC reports.
Missing xenon
Missing xenon, also called the missing xenon paradox or missing Xe problem, is the shortfall of over 90% of Earth's expected atmospheric xenon relative to chondritic meteorites.
Mist
Mist is a suspension of microscopic water droplets in the air near the ground that reduces visibility but not below 1 kilometer, when it becomes fog.
Mistral (wind)
The mistral is a cold, dry, turbulent regional wind of southern France that blows down the Rhône valley and over Provence toward the Mediterranean, gusting to 100 km/h.
Mixed layer
The mixed layer, also called the isothermal layer, is the turbulent upper ocean where wind and cooling make temperature, salinity, and density nearly uniform, typically tens of meters deep.
Mixed-phase cloud
A mixed-phase cloud is a cloud containing supercooled liquid droplets and ice crystals together, found from the tropics to the poles and important for precipitation and climate.
Mixing ratio
Mixing ratio is the ratio of the mass of water vapor to the mass of dry air in moist air, usually quoted in grams of vapor per kilogram.
Mixing regime
A mixing regime is the annual pattern of vertical mixing and thermal stratification in a lake, classified by how often and how completely its water circulates each year.
MM5 (weather model)
MM5, the Fifth-Generation NCAR/Penn State Mesoscale Model, is a limited-area numerical weather prediction model developed at Penn State and NCAR that became one of the world's most used mesoscale models in the mid-1990s.
Moabite (mineral)
Moabite is a rare nickel iron oxyphosphate mineral, NiFe³⁺(PO₄)O, approved by the IMA in 2021 and found in pyrometamorphic rocks of the Hatrurim Formation in central Jordan, named for the ancient Kingdom of Moab.
Mobile mesonet
A mobile mesonet is an instrumented vehicle that takes surface weather observations of temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, and sometimes solar radiation in and around storms, first deployed during the 1994 VORTEX project.
Mocho-Choshuenco
Mocho-Choshuenco (Complejo Volcánico Mocho-Choshuenco) is a 2,422 m compound Chilean volcano of two glacier-covered stratovolcanoes in Región de Los Ríos; last eruption 1937, among Chile's 14 most dangerous volcanoes.
Model for Prediction Across Scales
The Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) is a modeling framework developed by NCAR and Los Alamos National Laboratory, using variable-resolution Voronoi meshes for weather and climate simulation.
Modified Mercalli intensity scale
The Modified Mercalli intensity scale, also called the Mercalli scale, is a seismic scale used in the United States to describe shaking severity through observed effects on people and structures.
MOGREPS
MOGREPS, the Met Office Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System, is the UK Met Office's ensemble forecasting system for probabilistic short-range forecasts of wind, rain, snow, fog, and storms.
Mohorovičić discontinuity
The Mohorovičić discontinuity, usually shortened to the Moho, is the seismic boundary between Earth's crust and the underlying mantle, identified by Andrija Mohorovičić in 1909 from earthquake recordings near Zagreb.
Mohs scale
The Mohs scale, or Mohs hardness scale, is a ten-step scale devised by Friedrich Mohs that ranks minerals by scratch resistance, from talc at 1 to diamond at 10.
Moist static energy
Moist static energy (MSE) is a thermodynamic quantity of moist air, the sum of enthalpy, gravitational potential energy, and latent heat of water vapor, conserved in reversible adiabatic processes and widely used to study tropical convection.
Mojanda
Mojanda (Volcan Mojanda-Fuya Fuya) is an extinct 4,263 m volcanic complex in Ecuador's Interandean Depression near Otavalo, formed by two contemporaneous volcanoes with calderas, three summit lakes, and no confirmed Holocene eruptions.
Molasse
Molasse, introduced by Bernhard Studer in 1825, is a geology term for the thick sandstone and conglomerate sediments that fill foreland basins beside rising mountain chains.
Moldavite
Moldavite (Czech vltavín) is a green tektite, natural glass formed about 15 million years ago by the meteorite impact that created the Nördlinger Ries crater in Germany.
Mollisol
A Mollisol is a soil order in USDA Soil Taxonomy defined by a thick, dark, humus-rich surface horizon, making it among the most fertile and extensively farmed soils in the world.
Mollisols
Mollisols, from the Latin mollis meaning soft, are a USDA soil order with a thick, dark, humus-rich surface horizon, formed mainly under grassland and counted among the world's most productive agricultural soils.
Molybdenite
Molybdenite is a soft, gray molybdenum sulfide mineral (MoS₂) occurring in hexagonal crystals in igneous and metamorphic rocks, and the only ore used to produce molybdenum.
Moment tensor inversion
Moment tensor inversion is a seismological technique that estimates the forces at an earthquake source by fitting synthetic seismograms to waveforms, yielding fault orientation, seismic moment, and moment magnitude.