Description
Book SynopsisAtmospheric Convection is a scientifically rigorous description of the multitude of convective circulations in the Earth''s atmosphere. The book introduces the student to three principal techniques used in understanding and predicting convective motion: theory, field experiment, and numerical modelling. Each chapter is followed by a set of exercises designed to test the understanding of the phenomena themselves as well as the techniques used in exploiting them. Topics covered include dry convection, Raleigh-Benard convection, the thermodynamics of moist and cloudy air, and the characteristics of individual convective clouds.
Trade Review"[A]n excellent monograph by a leading atmospheric scientist...will be consulted by everyone interested in the complexities of dynamical meteorology and in the improvement of practical methods of climate and weather prediction."--Physics Today "Exceptionally interesting....Stimulating....Moist convection is not easy to characterize by models that can be analyzed analytically and yet illuminate essential physical mechanisms. The strength of this book is to blaze an intellectual trail through the field by collecting such models and presenting them and their assumptions completely and clearly enough that readers can derive and understand for themselves all essential equations and results....A major contribution that belongs on the bookshelf of any scholar of the subject. Its orientation toward conceptual models also makes it particularly useful for and accessible to researchers in areas such as climate dynamics....Makes a nice (and affordable) textbook on atmospheric convection for mathematically inclined advanced graduate students and it includes exercises of all levels of difficulty." --Christopher S. Bretherton, University of Seattle, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society "The author...has written an excellent graduate level teaching text....If the reviewer had not inherited the book by way of reviewing, he would have gone out and bought it anyway for its contained value in shaping and forming one's avenue of approach to the subject - praise enough, indeed!--Physics in Canada "Each chapter concludes with exercises for students and the author gives as well the e-mail address from which codes useful for solving some of them are available. The clear layout of the text and the favorable selection of the illustrations should also be emphasized...Useful not only for students but for professionals as well. A valuable contribution to the library of meteorological textbooks and monographs."--Krzysztof Haman, Institute of Geophysics
Table of ContentsPART I: Dry Convection 1: General Principles 2: Convection from Local Sources 3: Global Convection: The Rayleigh-Benard Problem and Dry Convective Boundary Layers PART II: Moist Thermodynamics and Stability 4: Moist Thermodynamic Processes 5: Graphical Techniques 6: Stability PART III: Local Properties of Moist Convection 7: Observed Characteristics of Nonprecipitating Cumuli 8: Theory of Mixing in Cumulus Clouds 9: Observed Characteristics of Precipitating Convection 10: Numerical Modeling of Convective Clouds 11: Dynamics of Precipitating Convection 12: Slantwise Convection PART IV: Global Moist Convection 13: Stratocumulus and Trade-Cumulus Boundary Layers 14: Deep Convective Regimes 15: Interaction of Convection with Large-scale Flows 16: Cumulus Representations in Numerical Models
