Meteorology Understanding the Atmosphere

Weather engulfs us. Its influence can be both dramatic and subtle. Weather tempers how dress, how we live, the music we dress, how we live, the music we play, and the art we create. It can destroy our homes our lives. It affectsand threaten our lives. It affects our daily activities, leisure, holidays, transportation, com­merce, agriculture, and nearly every aspect of our lives. Our fascination with the weather has led to 24-hour weather networks, feature-length motion pictures, and an explosion of detailed weather data over the Internet.Mark Twain said, “everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” You may not be able to change the weather, but you can discover the processes that determine weather. We think that learning about meteorology can and should be both enjoyable and relevant to your everyday life. Knowledge gained from reading this book can help you better understand nightly television weather reports and interpret news arti­cles on severe weather, impending climate change, greenhouse warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the causes and effects of El Nino. You will experience and be influ­enced by these events throughout your lifetime. Meteorology: Understanding the Atmosphere will help you to grasp the fundamentals and gain an appreciation of the complexities involved with these issues. The World Wide Web has enhanced your opportunity to learn meteorology by apply­ing textbook concepts to real-time weather conditions. A flood of sophisticated weather information that once was restricted to a few scientists is now just a click away on the World Wide Web. Meteorology: Understanding the Atmosphere will help you to make sense of the abundant weather information available to you on the Internet, serving as a refer­ence as you investigate current conditions. Most versionsof Meteorology: Understanding the Atmosphere come with access to MeteorologyNow™, the first student-centered online learning system created specifically for this course. MeteorologyNow™ uses a series of diagnostic tests to design a personalized study plan for you, allowing you to focus your study time on specific areas of weakness. Your personalized learning plan directs you to specific text sections as well as to a set of over three dozen learning applets designed to augment your understanding of weather. These visually compelling activities enable you to learn difficult concepts using self-guidedsimulations of meteorological phenomena.Meteorology is a topic that easily generates interest in and appreciation of natural science. Our goal in writing this book was to provide you with a perspective on meteorology as a science in which observations play a key role. Thus, we provide many observations, both personal and from scientific instruments, throughout this book, along with analysis of what the observations mean. This approach of observing and then analyzing the atmos­phere to gain an understanding is a scientific way of thinking, and it is how we, the authors, explore and understand the atmosphere ourselves. We hope that you find this approach exciting and that it inspires you to a lifetime of watching and understanding the weather.