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David A. Randall, Professor |
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David A. Randall, Professor |
This book is an attempt to sketch, with a few strokes, the role of atmospheric
processes in climate -- a massive, beautiful, and rapidly advancing subject,
full of elegant ideas and amazing facts. My goals are to teach you something
about the role of atmospheric processes in climate, and to entice you to want to
know more.
The book is aimed at undergraduates who have an interest in climate and some
familiarity with basic physics. No background in atmospheric science is assumed.
The physical processes that arise in the discussion include radiative transfer,
fluid dynamics, and thermodynamics. They are key to a wide range of
climate-related topics, including monsoons, winter storms, the water cycle, and
anthropogenic climate change.
Atmospheric physics is a highly quantitative subject, so this book contains lots
of numbers (mostly in the form of plots), and there are a few equations in
almost every chapter. Familiarity with basic calculus is assumed, but there are
no complicated derivations. The penalty paid for this simplicity is that the
explanations given are much less complete and rigorous than they could be in a
more technical book.