Mean
From Glossary of Meteorology
mean
Also called the arithmetic mean. A statistical measure of central tendency. The mean is one way to express a middle value of a dataset or frequency distribution. It is calculated by adding all the values in a dataset and dividing by the number of cases or samples.
Types can include mean over an ensemble of experimental realizations, mean over a time period, mean along a line such as a road or flight path, mean in an area such as a farm field, or mean within a volume of air such as can be sampled by a remote sensor. For example, the mean wind speed from anemometer measurements is the speed at a fixed point averaged over a time period such as 10 minutes.
See also average, ensemble mean.
Wilks, D. S., 2019: Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences. 4th ed. Elsevier, 840 pp.
Term edited 16 November 2022.
