Meteorology with Marine Applications

Abstract

THE weather touches our lives at many points, and had to we been air-crew personnel or among those concerned with beach landings or, indeed, with many other operations during the War, the effect of weather would have been of great immediacy. The subject is therefore of wide interest, it has been widely practised in recent years, and in consequence has acquired a fairly large semi-popular, introductory literature. This literature is, however, very uneven in quality, as a result presumably of enthusiasm for the subject sometimes outstripping the understanding. Meteorology, if not a difficult, is certainly a very complicated subject, calling for a thorough grounding in the classical branches of physics, particularly of mechanics and heat, and it is to be feared that not a little harm has been done to its students, if not also to the subject itself, by some of its recent expositors. One meets so often a series of false or incomprehensible statements, or, little better, of half-truths such as “ hot air rises”, “ the winds are a consequence of the pressure distribution”, and much other weariness to the spirit of which there seems scarcely any end.

Meteorology with Marine Applications

By William L. Donn. Pp. xv + 465. (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co. Inc., 1946.) 22s. 6d.