What is the name of the visual phenomenon of heat waves that dance off of a hot surface from a distance?

Question

You know when you are staring at a desert horizon and you see these translucent, squiggly waves dancing off the road surface in the distance? or when you stare at a hot roof from the ground and see those same squiggly waves? What is the name of those waves or that visual phenomenon?

Answer 1

inferior mirage.

Answer 2

That is called a mirage and it is caused by refraction.