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Sudbury Basin
The Sudbury Basin is an elliptical geological basin in Ontario, Canada, created by a giant meteorite impact 1.85 billion years ago, hosting major Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide deposits.
Sudden stratospheric warming
A sudden stratospheric warming is a rapid temperature rise of up to 50 °C in the winter polar stratosphere that reverses the polar winds and disrupts surface weather.
Sukhoi Log
Sukhoi Log ("dry gully") is a giant orogenic gold deposit in Irkutsk region, Eastern Siberia, Russia's largest, holding 43.5 million ounces of reserves and developed by Polyus.
Sulfide minerals
Sulfide minerals are minerals in which sulfur combines as an anion with metal or semi-metal cations, including pyrite and galena; they supply most copper, lead, zinc, and nickel, but their oxidation causes acid mine drainage.
Sulfur Cave
Sulfur Cave is a 520 m-long cave formed by sulfidic thermal water on the Greek-Albanian border, known for hosting the largest known spider web, home to about 111,000 spiders.
Sulfur cycle
The sulfur cycle is the set of pathways by which sulfur moves among Earth's crust, oceans, atmosphere, and living matter, moving over 50 million tons yearly.
Sulfuric acid mist
Sulfuric acid mist is an airborne aerosol of sulfuric acid droplets formed when sulfur trioxide meets water vapor, a regulated industrial emission classified as carcinogenic to humans.
Summer
Summer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, occurring when a hemisphere tilts toward the Sun; it spans June to August in the Northern Hemisphere.
Summit Camp
Summit Camp, or Summit Station, is the NSF-funded year-round U.S. research station near the apex of the Greenland Ice Sheet at 3,210 m, established 1989 for the GISP2 ice core, operated by Battelle ARO, distinct from same-named places in Nevada, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.
Sunrise Movement
The Sunrise Movement is an American youth-led climate organization founded in 2017, known for its 2018 sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's office with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and its push for the Green New Deal.
Sunset Crater
Sunset Crater, also known as Sunset Crater Volcano, is a cinder cone in northern Arizona that erupted around 1085 CE, the youngest in the San Francisco Volcanic Field.
Sunshine duration
Sunshine duration, or sunshine hours, is a climatological quantity defined by the WMO as the time direct solar irradiance exceeds 120 W/m², measured in hours at climate stations.
Sunshower
A sunshower, also called a monkey's wedding, is a meteorological phenomenon in which rain falls while the sun is shining, often forming a brief, localized shower during a hot afternoon.
Sunstone
Sunstone, also known as heliolite or aventurescent feldspar, is a gem variety of feldspar whose tiny reflective inclusions produce bright metallic flashes of light, an optical effect called aventurescence.
Suomi NPP
Suomi NPP (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership) is a NASA-NOAA polar-orbiting weather satellite launched October 28, 2011 from Vandenberg, California, the prototype of the Joint Polar Satellite System.
Super El Niño events
Super El Niño events are exceptionally strong El Niños in which central equatorial Pacific sea temperatures reach 2 °C above normal, recorded in 1982/1983, 1997/1998, 2015/2016, and 2026.
Super Pit Gold Mine
The Super Pit Gold Mine, formally the Fimiston Open Pit, is one of Australia's largest open-pit gold mines, beside Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia, on the rich Golden Mile deposit mined since 1893.
Super typhoon (classification)
A super typhoon is a typhoon in the western North Pacific with 1-minute winds of at least 130 knots (150 mph), per the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
Supercell
A supercell, also known as a supercell thunderstorm, is the least common and most dangerous thunderstorm type, a long-lived rotating storm producing the vast majority of violent tornadoes.
Supercontinent
A supercontinent is a landmass assembling at least 75 percent of Earth's continental crust, exemplified by Pangaea, Rodinia, and Columbia, which form and break up cyclically.
Supergene enrichment
Supergene enrichment is the near-surface concentration of metals in an ore deposit by downward-moving oxidizing groundwater, converting low-grade rock into a chalcocite-rich blanket often vital to copper mines.
Supervolcano
A supervolcano is a volcanic center that has produced a super-eruption of magnitude 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of material at once.
Surf zone
The surf zone is the nearshore region of the ocean where incoming waves break, extending from the breaker line to the beach; higher waves widen it.
Surface conductivity (geophysics)
Surface conductivity in geophysics is an extra electrical conductivity of porous rock or soil that flows along charged mineral surfaces rather than through pore water, and ignoring it biases resistivity interpretation in clays and shaly sands.
Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land
The Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) is a satellite image-processing method, formulated in 1998, that estimates actual evapotranspiration for every pixel of a satellite image and has been applied in more than 25 countries.
Surface exposure dating
Surface exposure dating measures cosmogenic nuclides in rock surfaces to estimate how long they have been exposed to cosmic rays, over ages from decades to millions of years.
Surface runoff
Surface runoff, also known as overland flow or stormwater runoff, is the portion of precipitation, snowmelt, or irrigation water that flows overland toward streams, rivers, drains, or sewers.
Surface water
Surface water is water in open bodies on the land surface, such as lakes, rivers, and streams; it is the most visible part of the hydrologic cycle and most cities' source.
Surface wave tomography
Surface wave tomography is a seismological imaging method that converts measurements of how seismic surface waves disperse into 3D shear-wave velocity models of the crust and upper mantle.
Surface weather analysis
A surface weather analysis is an analyzed synoptic chart of surface observations, commonly called the weather map, showing sea-level pressure, highs, lows, fronts, and air masses.