As models of the Earth/atmosphere system and observations become ever more sophisticated, and concerns about climate change and societal impacts of extreme weather and its forecasting grow, understanding the role of clouds in the atmosphere is increasingly vital. Cloud Dynamics, Second Edition provides the essential information needed to understand how clouds affect climate and weather.
This comprehensive book examines the underlying physics and dynamics of every specific type of cloud that occurs in the Earth's atmosphere, showing how clouds differ dynamically depending on whether they occur over oceans or mountains, or as parts of atmospheric storms, such as thunderstorms, tropical cyclones, or warm and cold fronts. Covering both the microphysical and macrophysical aspects of clouds, the book treats all of the physical scales involved in cloud processes, from the microscale of the individual drops and ice particles up to scales of storms in which the clouds occur.
As observational technology advances with increasingly sophisticated remote sensing capabilities, detailed understanding of how the dynamics and physics of clouds affect the quantities being measured is of paramount importance. This book underpins the work necessary for proper interpretation of these observations, now and in the future.
- Provides the holistic understanding of clouds needed to pursue research on topics vital to life on Earth
- Provides in-depth understanding of all types of clouds over all regions of Earth, from the poles to the equator
- Includes detailed physical and dynamical insight into the entire spectrum of clouds populating Earth's atmosphere
Professor Houze received his B.S. in Meteorology from Texas A&M University in 1967. He received his Master's and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in 1972. In 1988-89 he was Guest Professor in the Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. In 1996 he was Houghton Lecturer at the Center for Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2006 he was Thompson Lecturer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He has published about 200 research articles and has written a graduate textbook entitled Cloud Dynamics. In 1982, Professor Houze was awarded both the American Meteorological Society's Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award for his research and the Society's Editor's award for his reviews of papers for the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. In 1984, he was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. In 1989 he won the NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories' Distinguished Author's Award. In 2002, he was designated as a “Highly Cited Researcher” by the Institute of Scientific Information (h-index 56). In 2006, Professor Houze received the American Meteorological Society's Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, which is the highest honor that the Society can bestow on an atmospheric scientist. In 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and he delivered the Bjerknes Memorial Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's 2012 annual meeting. In 2013 he will be inducted as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his fundamental research on cloud dynamics.
