Book Description

This book has been designed for use both as a text for students of the atmospheric sciences and as an up-to-date sourcebook for researchers in allied fields who need guidance into particular topics. As a text, the book is suitable for advanced undergraduates and first-year graduate students, and each of its ten chapters concludes with a short problem set. As a sourcebook, the largely self-contained topical chapters introduce basic concepts and provide bibliographic pathways through the current literature for professionals in such fields as remote sensing of the atmosphere by earth satellite monitoring, solar energy, and acid rain. Four chapters cover the atmospheric aerosol and cloud physics, and four cover the processes of radiative transfer. Extended treatment is given to these two broad groups of phenomena because they directly affect the structure and motions of the atmosphere. In addition, there is a chapter on optical phenomena in the atmosphere (including refraction, mirages, the rainbow, the glory, the corona, the heiligenschein) and one on atmospheric electricity (covering the electrical structure of the fair weather atmosphere, the several proposed theories of thunderstorm charging and a discussion of the lightning stroke). Henry Houghton, a past president of the American Meteorological Society and long-time head of the MIT meteorology department, is universally recognized as one of the leading authorities on the subject of physical meteorology. His book is the culmination of more than 30 years of research and teaching at MIT, where he is now professor emeritus.