Weather : How It Works and Why It Matters

by Upgren, Arthur R.; Stock, Jurgen

• ISBN13: 9780738202945
• ISBN10: 0738202940
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-01
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Who Isn't worrled about the weather? From heat waves to winter storms, we are obsessed with weather and the science of weather prediction. What's more, our weather seems to be getting worse -- with more frequent droughts and floods, erratic temperature fluctuations, and longer, hotter summers -- which may be a harbinger of the significant climate change to come.

Author Biography

Arthur Upgren is Professor of Astronomy at Wesleyan University and has been director of its Van Vleck Observatory, and Senior Research Scientist at Yale University Jurgen Stock has been on the faculty of Hamburg and Case-Western Reserve Universities. He has also been director of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory at La Serena, Chile, as well as founding director of CIDA, the Venezuelan National Observatory at Merida

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Preface	xv
Introduction	1	(6)
Temperature and Pressure: The Fundamentals of Air	7	(8)
It's Not the Heat ... It's the Heat and the Humidity	15	(15)
The Four Seasons	30	(12)
Other Worlds: Lessons from Comparative Planetology	42	(8)
Weather Wisdom and Lore	50	(20)
Stormy Weather	70	(6)
When Time Stood Still: The Ancient History of the Climate	76	(16)
Here Come the Glaciers	92	(16)
The Post-Glacial Period: Homo Sapiens Comes of Age	108	(16)
The Greenhouse Gases: Making Our Own World	124	(22)
Oceans: The Majority Rules	146	(8)
El Nino: From Hoax to Menace	154	(5)
Ozone, Good and Bad	159	(7)
Two Worlds	166	(6)
Energy: Production and Consumption	172	(11)
The World in a Future Climate	183	(5)
Global Warming: The Everyman Misconception	188	(12)
Appendix I: Mass and Weight	200	(2)
Appendix II: Air Pressure and Density	202	(3)
Appendix III: Absorption and Condensation	205	(4)
Appendix IV: The Coriolis Effect and the Prevailing Westerlies	209	(2)
Appendix V: Further Remarks on the Causes of Mass Extinctions	211	(2)
Appendix VI: Instances of Global Warming	213	(3)
Bibliography	216	(2)
Index	218