Reddit Reddit reviews Atmospheric Science, Second Edition: An Introductory Survey (International Geophysics)

We found 7 Reddit comments about Atmospheric Science, Second Edition: An Introductory Survey (International Geophysics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Atmospheric Science, Second Edition: An Introductory Survey (International Geophysics)
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7 Reddit comments about Atmospheric Science, Second Edition: An Introductory Survey (International Geophysics):

u/counters · 5 pointsr/climateskeptics

Sigh.

Anyone who throws there hands up and says "lolwut, itz too complicated i dunno!" is not a skeptic. Do you honestly think that climate scientists don't study natural phenomena like the ones on this list and try to understand their causes and implications? This post is especially pathetic, but it's literally just a list of natural phenomena; if you think think this stuff is what makes the climate complex, then you literally don't know anything about atmospheric science.

You might want to start with the following textbooks, which any climate scientist will have devoured by the time they have a Masters -

  • Global Physical Climatology

  • An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology

  • Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics

  • Atmospheric Science: an Introductory Survey

  • Fundamentals of Large Scale Circulation

  • Dynamics and Ice Sheets of Glaciers

  • Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation

    There are, of course, higher level textbooks on my shelf as well. The majority of the stuff on this list is basic stuff that an undergraduate would be exposed to. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what our science is actually about.

    EDIT TO ADD -
    For example, geostrophy is this list. Do you know what geostrophic motion is? It's motion where the only forces acting on a parcel are the Coriolis force and the pressure gradient force. How do you get to geostrophic motion? Well, on the first day of your Junior year as a meteorology student, you start taking Atmospheric Dynamics. Your professor throws Navier-Stokes on the board and says "This is what we need to solve to figure out how the atmosphere works." Then he mentions that there is a million dollar prize for working with that equation and says "okay, let's see if we can simplify things." After that, you spend a few lectures deriving atmospheric motion following Holton, Lindzen, or Serreze - talking about the Rossby radius, coordinate transformations, Eulerian vs. Lagrangian and material derivatives, and path integrals through moving reference frames.

    Ultimately you re-derive equations of motion from scratch starting with F=ma, and arrive at a 3D set of equations where motion is determined by terms relating to the pressure gradient, accelerations, friction, gravity, and the Coriolis force. Then, you scale analyze the terms of the equations to see what the dominating terms are, given certain assumptions.

    Assume you're above the PBL; then, friction is negligible. You'll immediately see that acceleration/velocity-related terms are an order of magnitude smaller than the other terms. Assume hydrostatic balance and there is no acceleration in the vertical, truncating your motion to two dimensions. You're left with a balance of forces in both your basis vectors - pressure gradient and coriolis. Balance these two and you can solve for a balanced flow called geostrophic flow. Geostrophic flow is super-simple and only really works as an approximation for upper-level flows with small curvature (i.e. you need features larger than the Rossby radius of deformation or else the assumptions about 2D velocity are invalid). But it's a great learning tool for meteorology students to get their hands dirty with the math, and derive from first principles why flow is counter-clockwise around Low Pressures in the northern hemisphere.

    Relax some assumptions and you can also get gradient flow or cyclostrophic flow.

    You can't do any meteorology with these flows, though - you need at least to relax geostrophy and derive quasi-geostrophy with the aid of the circulation and divergence theorems to actually get vertical motion which is diagnosable from thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.

    Anything else from the domain of the atmospheric science that the skeptics here want explained? Now's your chance.
u/blocku_atmos · 3 pointsr/Winterwx

Well then

https://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Science-Second-Introductory-International/dp/012732951X

That should get it done. If you want way more "headaches because I don't understand" math then this

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Dynamic-Meteorology-International-Geophysics/dp/0123848660

Those 2 are pretty standard for the field

u/Khris777 · 3 pointsr/meteorology

This is the best book if you understand some basic undergraduate calculus.

http://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Science-Second-Introductory-International/dp/012732951X

u/wteng · 3 pointsr/AskAcademia

How comfortable are you with math and at which "level" do you want to understand the concepts of weather? I.e., do you want to learn the physics behind it, or just know what fronts, cyclones etc. that they talk about on TV are?

For the former the book Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey is a comprehensive introduction, but I wouldn't recommend it to laymen who are just interested in weather.

u/thirsty_ratchet · 2 pointsr/meteorology

I'm currently enrolled in a masters program in meteorology in Norway. I'm not sure what curriculum is in the courses you're mentioning, but the meteorology relevant courses in my bachelor basically consist of the geophysical fluid dynamics found in this compendium, and atmospheric physics found in this book. The compendium is written by my professor, so there is definitely better ones out there, but it gives you an overlook of what is relevant. The book however is used in four different courses at my university, and is basically our bachelor bible of meteorology. Good luck!

u/Difluence · 1 pointr/TropicalWeather

You'll be hard-pressed to find a better introductory textbook than Wallace & Hobbs. It's a comprehensive and informative introductory tome that still manages to have lots of judiciously chosen pretty pictures.

https://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Science-Second-Introductory-International/dp/012732951X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505767093&sr=8-1&keywords=wallace+and+hobbs+atmospheric+science

u/mherr77m · 1 pointr/askscience

The standard textbook that I think most of us have used in atmospheric dynamics classes is Holton but has a bit of steep learning curve, depending on your background. Another book, that I think is a bit better at easing you into the material is Wiley, and then theres Wallace & Hobbs which is more of an undergraduate book.