OVERVIEW Recognize how the Metric System and the English System are used in meteorology.

OUTLINE

Metric System

To work in the field of meteorology, you must have a basic understanding of the science of measurement (metrology). When you can measure what you are talking about and express it in numerical values, you then have a knowledge of your subject. To measure how far something is moved, or how heavy it is, or how fast it travels, you may use a specific measurement system. There are many such systems throughout the world today. The Metric System (CGS, centimeter-grarn-second) has been recognized for use in science and research. Therefore, that system is discussed in the paragraphs that follow, with brief points of comparison to the English System (FPS, foot-pound-second).

Learning Objective: Recognize the units of measure used in the Metric System and the English System and how these systems of measurement are used in Meteorology.

The metric system is easy to learn as it is based on decimals. Because metrics are widely used in the field of meteorology, they are used throughout the manual. An introduction to metrics is presented in this unit. For a more detailed discussion of metrics, you should refer to OCC-ECC, The Metric System, NAVEDTRA 475-01-00-79. 

As you saw earlier, the metric system uses centimeter-gram-seconds (CGS) to describe physi-cal events. These units measure length, weight, and time, respectively. The derivation of those units are described briefly.

To familiarize you with the conventional units of metric length, start with the meter. The meter is slightly larger than the English yard (39.36 inches vs 36 inches). Prefixes are used in conjunction with the meter to denote smaller or larger units of the meter. Each larger unit is ten times larger than the next smaller unit. (See table 1-1-1.)

Since the C in CGS represents centimeters (cm) you should see from table 1-1-1 that the centimeter is one-hundredth of a meter, .01M, or 10^-2M. Conversely, 1 M equals 100 cm.

To describe a gram, the G in the CGS system, you must first have a familiarization with area and volume.

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