Cell (meteorology)

As a cell in which it is meteorology two designated:

1. A grid-shaped unit cell for predicting weather phenomena. The fineness of this grid determines the accuracy of the weather forecast , but the computational effort and the need for primary data increase squarely to cubic with the number of cells.

The boundaries of the grid cells are determined by geographic coordinates . The necessary data for each element are above all air temperature , air pressure , humidity , wind and cloud cover . They come from terrestrial weather stations , partly from balloon probes and increasingly from weather satellites .

2. An approximately circular air flow in the lower earth atmosphere . Such phenomena are usually driven by temperature gradients that arise from different levels of solar radiation , from which wind and pressure systems develop.

The cells can have global dimensions, such as the Hadley cells of the subtropical circulation, or analogously the polar cells of the Arctic. Other cells are small-scale, like the super cells in the formation of a thunderstorm .