A northwesterly wind with fine weather that blows, especially in summer, in the Adriatic; it is most frequent on the western shore and is equivalent to the etesians of the eastern Mediterranean. It is
also found on the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia. Compare mistral.
Mafic is an adjective describing a silicate mineral or rock that is rich in magnesium and iron; the term was derived by contracting ‘magnesium’ and ‘ferric’. Most mafic minerals are dark in color and
the specific gravity is greater than 3. Common rock-forming mafic minerals include olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite. Common mafic rocks include basalt and gabbro. In terms of chemistry, mafic rocks are on the other side of the rock spectrum from the felsic rocks. The term roughly corresponds to the older basic rock class.Mafic lava, before cooling, has a low viscosity, in comparison to felsic lava, due to the lower silica content in mafic magma. Water and other volatiles can more easily and gradually escape from mafic lava, so eruptions of volcanoes made of mafic lavas are less explosively violent than felsic lava eruptions. Most mafic lava volcanoes are oceanic volcanoes, like Hawaii. [Wikipedia]
Geomagnetic - geocentric. Z axis is parallelto the geomagnetic dipole axis, positive north. X is in the plane defined bythe Z axis and the Earth's rotation axis. If N is a unit vector from theEarth's
center to the north geographic pole, the signs of the X and Y axesare given by Y = N x Z, X = Y x Z.. See Russell, 1971, and