| Date: 28 April 2011, 05:47
|
Clouds play a critical role in the Earth’s climate, general atmospheric circulation, and global water balance. Clouds are essential elements in mesoscale meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, air pollution, atmosphericradiation, and weather forecasting, and thus must be understood by any student or researcher in the atmospheric sciences.
Cloud Dynamics provides a skillful and comprehensive examination of the nature of clouds–what they look like and why, how scientists observe them, and the basic dynamics and physics that underlie them. The book describes the mechanics governing each type of cloud that occurs in Earth’s atmosphere, and the organization of various types of clouds in larger weather systems such as fronts, thunderstorms, and hurricanes.This book is aimed specifically at graduate students, advanced undergraduates, practicing researchers either already in atmospheric science or moving in from a related scientific field, and operational meteorologists. Some prior knowledge of atmospheric dynamics and physics is helpful, but a thorough overview of the necessary prerequisites is supplied.
Key Features
* Key Highlights of This Text
* Provides a complete treatment of clouds integrating the analysis of air motions with cloud structure, microphysics, and precipitation mechanics
* Describes and explains the basic types of clouds and cloud systems that occur in the atmosphere-fog, stratus, stratocumulus, altocumulus, altostratus, cirrus, thunderstorms, tornadoes, waterspouts, orographically induced clouds, mesoscale convection complexes, hurricanes, fronts, and extratropical cyclones
* Presents a photographic guide, presented in the first chapter, linking the examination of each type of cloud with an image to enhance visual retention and understanding
* Summarizes the fundamentals, both observational and theoretical, of atmospheric dynamics, thermodynamics, cloud microphysics, and radar meteorology, allowing each type of cloud to be examined in depth
* Integrates the latest field observations, numerical model simulations, and theory
* Supplies a theoretical treatment suitable for the advanced undergraduate or graduate level
Summary: thorough discussion of clouds and cloud processes
Rating: 5
Divided into two sections ("Fundamentals" and "Phenomena") Houze’s book examines the general structure, physics, and evolution of a wide range of cloud types/forms. It’s often difficult to blend these viewpoints together, but Houze does so with a healthy mix of equations (some difficult!), popular figures from the literature, and explanations.
The "Fundamentals" section (first 4 chapters) is a great reference item for anyone interested in meteorology: a pictorial cloud atlas, reviews of the equations of motion, of general microphysics (how particles in clouds form, grow, and decay), and a discussion of weather radar. "Phenomena" range from fog to cumulus clouds to hurricanes and even mid-latitude cyclones.
Houze applies the "fundamentals" to all of the "phenomena" he covers…once you master the fundamentals–senior undergraduates and beginning graduate students should be able to follow the math–discussion of the cloud processes becomes easier to read.
Summary: Excellent book on time-dependent behavior of clouds.
Rating: 4
Good physical and mathematical description of the temporal behavior of all forms and types of clouds. Written at graduate level. Covers all aspects of cloud dynamics including fundamentals of atmospheric dynamics. Details of particular cloud classes from met viewpoint including measurements. Emphasis on measurements to support modeling.
PassWord: books_for_all
|
DISCLAIMER:
This site does not store Cloud Dynamics on its server. We only index and link to Cloud Dynamics provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete Cloud Dynamics if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
|
 |
|
Comments (0)
All
