partially covering absorber model
Imagine looking through a telescope and seeing the light from one of these storms bounce off the dense gas near its black hole. It would be like shining a flashlight into a thick cloud – most of the light would get absorbed or scattered away, but some might make it out to tell us more about what's happening inside this cosmic storm.
Technical definition
A model that accounts for the spectral resolution by assuming an absorber is partially covering the black hole's line-of-sight.