What is Air Mass and its description ?

Air Mass is an extremely large body of air whose properties of temperature and moisture content (humidity), at any given altitude, are fairly similar in any horizontal direction.

  • can cover hundreds of thousands of square miles.
  • there can be small variations

Source Regions are simply geographic areas where an air mass originates. Should be:

  1. uniform surface composition – flat
  2. light surface winds

The longer the air mass stays over its source region, the more likely it will acquire the properties of the surface below.

Classification: 4 general air mass classifications categorized according to the source region.

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