Focus
This book is intended to be useful, interesting and easily
understood by means of four features -
- It deals primarily with general principles, applicable
anywhere in the world. They are explained in a straightforward
text with 264 drawings and 63 tables, suitable for a beginner
in this field of study. This is supplemented by 171 separate notes,
31 more drawings and 16 tables, containing material for the teacher
and more advanced student, all on a disk supplied with the hardback
version of the book. The disk also includes recommendations of
further reading, essay questions, numerical exercises (with answers)
for the student, suggestions for teachers of the subject, descriptions
of simple experiments, and a full list of the literature used
in writing the book. Students who have the softback version can
easily obtain a copy of the disk material from a teacher who has
a hardback book.
- We have tried to integrate meteorology and climatology
to an extent that is unusual for a textbook, though increasingly
common in practice. This integration makes the book interdisciplinary,
yet detailed enough to be of value to introductory courses in
either discipline. The scope of the book provides a more scientific
approach than geography students normally follow, and a broader
relevance than meteorology students usually experience. In its
interdisciplinary approach, the book further contributes to the
breaking down of the gap between the 'exact' and 'social' sciences,
and between sciences and the applied world.
- The book contains numerous cases of the relevance
of weather and climate to ordinary life. These include agriculture,
droughts, housing, human comfort and newly important subjects
like skin cancer, climate change, and the effects of temperature
on mortality.
- The examples are taken from the southern hemisphere,
to complement other text-books, which almost all concentrate on
the northern half of the world. The south has no equal to the
huge Eurasian and North American landmasses. On the other hand,
the greater area of ocean in the south leads to more evaporation
and less variable temperatures, and the huge southern Pacific
ocean is the scene of El Niño episodes. Also, synoptic
weather patterns are smaller and more mobile, and there is less
air pollution on the whole than in the northern hemisphere. The
Antarctic continent is more extensive and elevated than the Arctic,
so the South Pole is far colder, which indirectly explains why
the ozone over the Antarctic vanishes each spring. Related to
this are the powerful winds blowing from west to east across the
southern oceans. Another difference concerns the motions of oceans
and winds; they circulate in the opposite direction in the southern
hemisphere. This applies to circulations in entire ocean basins,
as well as to fronts, tropical cyclones, sea breezes, even thunderstorms.
In brief, southern hemisphere weather and climate are quite distinct,
though few textbooks deal with this.