noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   a widespread body of air, the properties of which can be identified as: (a) having been established while that air was situated over a particular region of the Earth's surface (airmass source region) and (b) undergoing specific modifications while in transit away from the source region. An air mass is often defined as a widespread body of air that is approximately homogeneous in its horizontal extent, particularly with reference to temperature and moisture distribution; in addition, the vertical temperature and moisture variations are approximately the same over its horizontal extent.
2. 2
   The amount of air through which light from a celestial object passes, normalized to 1 for an object at zenith.

   "Unfortunately, the extinction is very sensitive to the airmass[…]"

Synonyms

All synonyms

anticyclonecold frontcold sectorcyclonefronthigh

Example

More examples

"Unfortunately, the extinction is very sensitive to the airmass[…]"

Etymology

From air + mass.

Related phrases

air mass classificationairmass source region

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.