Bücher der Reihe Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library

This monograph provides the first opportunity to extensively introduce this subject and give a comprehensive and systematic description of the major aspects of monsoons over China, with a special emphasis on the fluctuations of the monsoon on various scales and the effects of the Tibetan Plateau on the monsoon.

Wind erosion occurs in many arid, semiarid and agricultural areas of the world. It is an environmental process in?uenced by geological and climatic variations as well as human activities. In general, wind erosion leads to land degradation in agricultural areas and has a negative impact on air quality. Dustemissiongeneratedbywinderosionisthelargestsourceofaerosolswhich directly or indirectly in?uence the atmospheric radiation balance and hence global climatic variations. Strong wind-erosion events, such as severe dust storms, may threaten human lives and cause substantial economic damage. The physics of wind erosion is complex, as it involves atmospheric, soil and land-surface processes. The research on wind erosion is multidisciplinary, covering meteorology, ?uid dynamics, soil physics, colloidal science, surface soil hydrology, ecology, etc. Several excellent books have already been written about the topic, for instance, by Bagnold (1941, The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes), Greeley and Iversen (1985, Wind as a Geological P- cess on Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan), Pye (1987, Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits), Pye and Tsoar (1990, Aeolian Sand and Sand Dunes). However, considerable progress has been made in wind-erosion research in recent years and there is a need to systematically document this progress in a new book.

Prior to the space age, meteorologists rarely paid particular attention to the height regions above the tropopause. The region in between, presently known as the middle atmosphere, was almost terra incognita above the height reachable by balloons.

Radiative heat transfer is a fundamental factor in the energetics of the terrestrial atmosphere: the system consisting of the atmosphere and the underlying layer is heated by the Sun, and this heating is compensated, on the average, by thermal radia tion.

During the last 20 years the study of, and the prediction of, changes in the climate of our planet have become an urgent social imperative, addressed to scientists the world over.

Climate variability has major impacts in many parts of the world, including Australia. The state of the science in climate forecasting is reviewed before considering detailed examples of applications to: farm scale agricultural decisions (such as management of cropping and grazing systems);

A Course held in The Hague, the Netherlands, 21--25 September, 1981

Secondly, the book serves as an introduction to the range of modern ideas and the methods in the study of wave processes in dispersive media. The book is meant for specialists in physics of the ocean, oceanography, geophysics, hydroacoustics.

During the 1980's a wealth of information was reported from field and laboratory experiments in order to validate andlor modify various aspects of the surface layer Monin-Obukhov (M-O) similarity theory for use over the sea, and to introduce and test new concepts related to high resolution flux magnitudes and variabilities.

Several averaging methods have been proposed by various scientists and are used on a regular basis to obtain data averaged in space orfand in time, to yield data which are less influenced by random factors than initial point data are.

This monograph provides the first opportunity to extensively introduce this subject and give a comprehensive and systematic description of the major aspects of monsoons over China, with a special emphasis on the fluctuations of the monsoon on various scales and the effects of the Tibetan Plateau on the monsoon.

This book provides a detailed description of light absorption and absorbents in seawaters with respect to provenance, region of the sea, depth of the occurrence and trophicity.

This book offers a comprehensive review of current knowledge on how natural and anthropogenic land-use and cover changes affect weather, air quality and climate worldwide, and explains how these changes might trigger further land-use and land cover changes.

This book presents a global hydrographic description of the thermohaline circulation, an introduction to the theoretical aspects of this phenomenon, and observational evidence for the theory.

Chapter 11 deals with the formulation of a regional spectral model for mesoscale modeling which uses a double Fourier expansion of data and model equations for its transform.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art in atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) research. It focuses on experimental ABL research and discusses new subjects such as micro-rain radars and the use of ceilometers for ABL profiling.

However, vigorous research has taken place over the past five years in various areas of tropical climate dynamics, especially in the atmosphere-ocean mechanisms of climate anomalies, climate prediction, ocean circulation, and paleoclimates.

Several averaging methods have been proposed by various scientists and are used on a regular basis to obtain data averaged in space orfand in time, to yield data which are less influenced by random factors than initial point data are.

Secondly, the book serves as an introduction to the range of modern ideas and the methods in the study of wave processes in dispersive media. The book is meant for specialists in physics of the ocean, oceanography, geophysics, hydroacoustics.

During the 1980's a wealth of information was reported from field and laboratory experiments in order to validate andlor modify various aspects of the surface layer Monin-Obukhov (M-O) similarity theory for use over the sea, and to introduce and test new concepts related to high resolution flux magnitudes and variabilities.

The most serious obstacle to the study of climatic and other geographical elements of the polar areas (including the Arctic) has always been the severe climatic conditions which prevail in these regions.

Several excellent books have already been written about the topic, for instance, by Bagnold (1941, The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes), Greeley and Iversen (1985, Wind as a Geological P- cess on Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan), Pye (1987, Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits), Pye and Tsoar (1990, Aeolian Sand and Sand Dunes).

"[...] an interesting and well-written overview of the current status of our knowledge of the composition of the middle atmosphere and the basic radiative, dynamical and photochemical processes which maintain it." (Bulletin American Meteorological Society)

Scientists investigating the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere now believe that the drag coefficient, and the coefficients of heat transfer and moisture transfer at the sea surface, all increase with an intensification of the wind, reaching high values during a storm.

THE STUDY OF THE BIOSPHERE The term 'biosphere' first appeared in the works of the French biologist 1.-B. Several terms have been suggested for the science of the biosphere, including global ecology (a discipline studying the global ecological system, whose meaning is close to that of the biosphere).

Cloud physics has achieved such a voluminous literature over the past few decades that a significant quantitative study of the entire field would prove unwieldy. cloud electricity, which deals with the electrical structure of clouds and the electrification processes of cloud and precipi tation particles;

Part of the excitement in boundary-layer meteorology is the challenge associated with turbulent flow - one of the unsolved problems in classical physics.