Climate Change Book Review

Donald Ahrens, Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate and the Environment (Brooks/Cole: CENGAGE Learning, 2009)

This is a university textbook on meteorology, with a few chapters relevant to global warming. While not controversial and not up-to-date with the latest developments of climate science, it provides excellent coverage of weather and climate basics. Most articles on climate change assume the basics are understood, so a book that deals with the basic is useful.

Meteorology basics include seasonal and daily temperatures, humidity, condensation, cloud development, precipitation, winds, air masses and fronts, cyclones, forecasting, thunderstorms, tornados and basics.

Topics particularly relevant to climate change include warming the earth and its atmosphere, earth's changing climate, and global climate.

Some of the basics that may be of interest related to climate change include:

1. Definitions (e.g. scattering, reflection, albedo).
2. The tools for reconstructing past climates.
3. Types of energy waves and related wave lengths.
4. Earth's energy balance and energy flows among incoming solar radiation, outgoing radiation, atmospheric and surface gains and losses of energy.

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