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Coal
Coal is a combustible sedimentary deposit, mostly carbon, formed from compacted plant remains over geologic time, and the world's most abundant fossil fuel.
Coal Measures
Coal Measures is the traditional name for the coal-bearing Upper Carboniferous strata of western Europe, deposited about 313.5 to 306.5 million years ago, which fueled the Industrial Revolution.
Coal-seam fire
A coal-seam fire, or coal fire, is a fire in which coal burns in place in seams or mines, often for decades; examples include Centralia, Pennsylvania, and Burning Mountain, Australia.
COAMPS
COAMPS (Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System) is a numerical weather prediction system developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California, and described in 1997.
Coarse particulate organic matter
Coarse particulate organic matter (CPOM) is the fraction of aquatic detritus larger than 1 mm, chiefly terrestrial leaves, twigs, and wood entering streams from the riparian zone.
Coastal boundary layer
The coastal boundary layer (CBL) is the inshore region of a large lake or coastal ocean where the shore shapes currents, mixing, and transport, also called the inner shelf.
Coastal erosion
Coastal erosion, also called beach or shoreline erosion, is the wearing away and removal of land along the shore by waves, currents, tides, and wind, with storms causing the most rapid losses.
Coastal flooding
Coastal flooding, also called coastal inundation or estuarine flooding, is the flooding of low-lying land by seawater, most often when storm surges and strong winds coincide with high tides.
Coastal Niño
A Coastal Niño (Spanish: El Niño costero) is an episode of warm coastal waters off northern Peru and Ecuador, without the basin-wide warming of a full El Niño.
Coastal upwelling
Coastal upwelling is the wind-driven rise of cold, nutrient-rich deep water along coastlines, where winds push surface water offshore and it is replaced from below.
Coastal Zone Color Scanner
The Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) was a NASA radiometer on the Nimbus-7 satellite, launched in 1978, that was the first sensor devoted to measuring ocean color from space.
Cobaltite
Cobaltite is a silver-white cobalt sulfarsenide mineral, CoAsS, with a pyrite-related structure, found in high-temperature hydrothermal veins and mined as an industrial cobalt ore, notably at Bou Azzer, Morocco and Blackbird, Idaho.
Coda wave interferometry
Coda wave interferometry is a seismological and ultrasonic method, introduced in 2002, that detects small velocity changes by comparing multiply scattered coda waves, used to monitor volcanoes and faults.
Coesite
Coesite is a dense, high-pressure polymorph of silicon dioxide (SiO₂), synthesized by Loring Coes in 1953 and first found in nature at Meteor Crater, Arizona, in 1960.
Coffinite
Coffinite is a uranium-bearing silicate mineral with formula USiO₄, first described in 1955 from Colorado Plateau deposits, and the second most abundant uranium mineral after uraninite.
Colaba Observatory
Colaba Observatory, also known as Bombay Observatory, was a government observatory in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, whose magnetic records from 1846 to 1905 include the extreme 1859 Carrington storm.
Cold blob
The cold blob, also called the North Atlantic warming hole, is a region south of Greenland where sea surface temperatures have cooled even as the rest of the planet warmed.
Cold Climate
Cold climate: Köppen-Geiger continental (D) and polar (E) zones with cold winters or year-round cold, permafrost and snow cover, and health and infrastructure effects.
Cold front
A cold front is the boundary at the leading edge of an advancing cold air mass, displacing warmer air and often bringing showers, thunderstorms, and a sharp temperature drop.
Cold pool (meteorology)
In meteorology, a cold pool is cold, dense air produced by evaporating rain in thunderstorm downdrafts, spreading at the surface as a density current with a gust front at its leading edge.
Cold seep
A cold seep, also called a methane seep, is a seafloor location where methane-rich fluids escape into the ocean at temperatures near that of seawater, sustaining ecosystems that live without sunlight.
Cold semi-arid climate
A cold semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk) is a dry climate too dry for forest but not a desert, with mean annual temperature below 18 °C.
Cold wave
A cold wave, also called a cold snap, is a period of unusually cold weather with a sharp temperature drop over a large area lasting at least two days.
Cold-air damming
Cold-air damming (CAD) is a weather phenomenon in which a shallow layer of cold, stable air becomes trapped against a mountain range, best documented east of the Appalachian Mountains.
Cold-air outbreak
A cold-air outbreak is a meteorological event in which cold, dry polar air moves rapidly equatorward, often over warmer seas, producing strong heat exchange, cloud streets, and polar lows.
Colemanite
Colemanite is a hydrous calcium borate mineral and a principal ore of boron, first found in 1882 in Death Valley and now mined chiefly in Turkey and California.
Collision-coalescence process
The collision-coalescence process, or warm rain process, forms rain in clouds warmer than freezing: droplets of different sizes fall at different speeds, collide, and merge into raindrops.
Colorado Plateau
The Colorado Plateau is a largely undeformed physiographic province covering about 150,000 square miles across Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, known for flat-lying layers carved into canyons including the Grand Canyon.
Columbia (supercontinent)
Columbia, also called Nuna or Hudsonland, is a hypothesized supercontinent that assembled from most of Earth's continental blocks between 2.1 and 1.8 billion years ago and preceded Rodinia.
Columbus Day Storm of 1962
The Columbus Day Storm of 1962, also known as Typhoon Freda or the Big Blow, was an extratropical windstorm that struck the Pacific Northwest on October 12, 1962.