Dynamics of Meteorology and Climate

Dynamics of Meteorology and Climate. Richard S. Scorer. 1997. 686 pp. $49.95. Paperbound. John Wiley & Sons in association with Praxis Publishing. ISBN 0471-96816-1.

Dynamics of Meteorology and Climate provides a broad-based presentation and discussion of atmospheric phenomena with a focus on mesoscale flows near the earth's surface and with an extension to largescale circulation, environmental, and climate change issues. The book is based on the author's 1978 book, Environmental Aerodynamics, which in turn was a sequel to his 1958 book Natural Aerodynamics. A review of the 1978 book appeared in 1979 (Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 60, 345). The new material includes topics such as radiation, general circulation modeling, predictability, and anthropogenic climate change, and it provides both useful summarization and thoughtprovoking ideas. The current book is a virtual compendium of the scientific interests of the author and extends to subject matter beyond his personal research focus. The generous use of photographs and satellite imagery of clouds and land surface throughout the book provides a special component not found in many technical-level books.

The combination of its very broad scope of coverage, technical level of material and mathematics, and numerous real-world pictures makes the book a valuable reference for varied readership. Scientists and students in many fields, including physics, applied mathematics, engineering, atmospheric science, oceanography, and geophysics, will find beneficial material here. To my knowledge, this volume has no close counterpart in the field.

There are three parts to the book. Part 1, "Fundamental Theory, Vorticity, Waves, and Instability," focuses on basic theory and details of some examples of local-scale flow phenomena taken from the 1978 book. Part 2, "Turbulent Phenomena, Clouds, and Dispersion," also primarily derived from the 1978 book, has a new chapter on radiation. The first two parts provide a unique and comprehensive presentation for many small-scale phenomena in the atmosphere. Part 3, "Forecasting and Climate Change," was not part of the 1978 book. It is nearly entirely independent from the first two parts except for connections to chapter 13 on radiation and the last few pages in chapter 14 on clouds, both in Part 2. Placing these discussions into Part 3 would have improved the book's organization. There is only very occasional reference in Part 3 to basics presented in chapter 1, "Fundamental Equations," and chapter 4, "The Rotating Earth," of Part 1. One wonders why Part 3 was combined with the other two parts in one book.

Part 3, the only basis for adding the word "climate" to the book title, was a disappointment to me. It touches on topics such as general circulation models, chaos concepts, limits to climate prediction, examples of natural variability, ozone factors, and a philosophical and historical perspective on climate change. The discussion of the topics that are included is very interesting reading. However, Part 3 does not provide the depth of information needed for understanding climate and climate change such as one finds in Global Physical Climatology (Hartmann 1994) or Physics of Climate (Peixoto and Oort 1992). The presentation is purely descriptive, incomplete, and somewhat disorganized. Chapter 16, "Forecasting: General Circulation Models (GCMs)," touches on modeling and forecast limits but then moves on to ocean-related material about the oceanic North Atlantic conveyer belt and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) with focus on their variability but not with application to forecasting. The chapter ends with discussion of oceanic "returning flow," Kelvin and Rossby waves, and internal mixing, but it has no reference of application to either forecasting or general circulation modeling. Important topics such as modeling of the planetary energy balance and feedback mechanisms were left out. Chapter 17 on prediction and proof of climate change is brief and very superficial. Current approaches involving comparisons with "natural variability" and "footprint" analysis of the spatial structure of climate change signals are not mentioned. Chapter 18 on ozone is an independent discussion that relates more to anthropogenic environmental impacts such as the ozone hole and surface air pollution than to climate change. It also includes other issues such as "science-based threats." Chapter 19 focuses on paleoclimate variations and, at the end, switches back to limits to modeling due to the chaotic nature of the solutions as suggested by ensemble forecasts characteristics. Chapter 20 is a short, interesting, quasi-philosophical essay on climate change.

There are some details that could confuse or mislead the reader. Several examples are discussed here. In chapter 4, section 6, the statement that vertical velocity is zero at the lower boundary (earth surface) sounds rather categorical and may be confusing in light of the discussion in chapter 6 highlighting vertical motion produced by topography. The sentence on page 215, "In fact `cold lows' are common in the atmosphere, hurricanes being the extreme case," may be misread to imply that the hurricane is a case of an extreme cold low, which is not true. The reference to the barotropic model as a "barotropic trap" for forecasters (p. 223) ignores the reality that the (equivalent) barotropic numerical prediction model was a useful and standard tool for operational forecasters over the decades from the 1950s to the 1980s. The discussion about the impact of the biosphere on climate change in chapter 13, section 7, is incomplete. There is no mention of the biosphere's role as a source and sink for greenhouse gases, nor of its role in the hydrological cycle. The statement on page 580 that salt may easily add 10% to the density of sea water exaggerates the observed salinity augmentation of sea water density by a factor of more than 2. The acronym ENSO (p. 484) should be spelled out rather than just saying it is a "code name." The numerical model initialization discussion in chapter 16 could have been updated and made more interesting by reference, for instance, to adjoint methods currently in use.

In spite of its limitations, I found the book very interesting. Its mixture of pictures, technical mathematics, descriptive sections, unusual information, and philosophical comments keeps the curious person reading. The description of the one-day predictions currently made for the length of the day (pp. 565-566) is an example of such unusual information. Another example is the overview of evolutionary changes for planetary angular momentum and mass distributions in our solar system (pp. 567-568). Clearly, the book will be a very useful supplement for scientists and engineers with some prior knowledge of the subject areas even without the organization and orderly development of ideas of a stand-alone textbook.

-David D. Houghton.

[Reference]

References

[Reference]

Hartmann, D., 1994: Global Physical Climatology. Academic Press, 411 pp.

Peixoto, J. P., and A. H. Oort, 1992: Physics of Climate. American Institute of Physics, 520 pp.

[Author Affiliation]

David D. Houghton is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of WisconsinMadison. Over his career, he has been involved in a range of mesoscale and climate dynamics and numerical modeling research projects.