Abstract
INSTUCTOR-COMMANDER S. W. C. PACK is concerned more with the fundamental bases of synoptic metegrology than with the actual details of weather forerafeting. As a grounding, his book is comprehensive, beginning with the structure of the atmospiere and, briefly, meteorological instruments, and continuing with a good deal of climatology, which is an essential background to all weather forecasting. Incidentally, the thermometer at Black-adder which recorded a minimum of -23° F. was not conventionally exposed. The chapter on "Fronts"and the development of depressions is on the usual lines ; but wind in relation to pressure gradient is more clearly demonstrated than is usual in textbooks. The most detailed and best part of the book is the treatment of adiabatic changes, dry and saturated, and the discussion of the tephigram and its uses in determining stability or instability ; this should make a difficult subject clear to most students, as should also the later chapter on the variation of wind with height. The chapter on analysis and forecasting covers only eleven pages and is disappointing ; there is no actual example of the analysis of a chart, either at ground-level or in the upper air. The book is well illustrated with photographs and clear diagrams. but seems high-priced for its size.
Weather Forecasting
By Instructor-Comdr. S. W. C. Pack. Pp. 192+8 plates. (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1948.) 25s. net.
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Weather Forecasting. Nature 163, 896 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163896a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163896a0