Abstract
THE writers of this book have been ambitious ; they have attempted, within their 450 pages, 8¼ in. X 5 in., to provide the physicist with an adequate text on all those parts of meteorology which are likely to be of concern to him in practising his profession in, say, one of the national meteorological services of the world. Whether they can be said to have been successful depends largely upon one‘s like or dislike of the plan they have adopted, which is to divide the subject somewhat arbitrarily into the two parts indicated by the title, and to make each part more or less self-contained, so that the ‘practical' aspects of the subject can, if required, be read separately from the basic theory on which the applications depend. Thus, following an introductory chapter outlining the broad features of observations over the globe, Part 1 on theoretical meteorology comprises chapters on subjects of the expected kind (statics, thermodynamics, radiation, dynamics, etc.), but also one on the principles of meteorological statistics—a rather happy inclusion. Part 2 on applied meteorology deals with instruments and observations ; the general circulation; vertical stability, air masses, weather systems and winds ; fog, cloud, precipitation and aircraft icing ; climatology ; chart analysis and weather forecasting ; and meteorology in relation to human activities. Rigour is claimed for the treatment in Part 1, to which the reader is referred for the derivation of results used in Part 2, which is more sparing of mathematics than Part 1.
Meteorology
Theoretical and Applied. By Dr. E. Wendell Hewson and Richard W. Longley. Pp. xii + 468. (New York : John Wiley and Sons, Inc. ; London : Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1944.) 4.75 dollars.
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SHEPPARD, P. Meteorology. Nature 161, 625 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161625a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161625a0