Short Course in Cloud Physics

Rating:
Summary: Best introductory text on cloud physics
Review: As an engineer trying to come up to speed on cloud physics, this book was absolutely essential. It covers essentials such as the thermodynamics of dry air, water vapor and its thermodynamic effects, parcel buoyancy and atmospheric stability, mixing and convection, observed properties of clouds, formation of cloud droplets, droplet growth by condensation, initiation of rain in nonfreezing clouds, formation and growth of ice crystals, rain and snow, weather radar, precipitation processes, severe storms and hail, weather modification, and numerical weather models.

This is the best introductory text one can buy.

Rating:
Summary: Good introductory book on cloud physics
Review: There are very few stand-alone cloud physics text books on the market. More often than not only a chapter is devoted to clouds in a general atmospheric sciences text book, which grossly neglects the complexity of the subject. Fortunately this one does provide a terrific introduction for students/researchers in atmospheric sciences/physics/engineering who want to learn more about clouds. Basic concepts are presented in a consice but often mathy way. Sometimes the empirical equations can throw the readers off a bit. Unfortunately these catches are almost inevitable in cloud physics.

A great merit of this book is its size. A well-designed undergraduate course can definitely go through most of the topics. At the same time there is enough detailed information that the interested instructors and students can develop term projects or simple models using the book as a reference. In all I highly recommend this text as an introduction to cloud physics. Advanced researchers in the field, however, will need a more extensive reference, such as Pruppacher and Klett.

Rating:
Summary: Good introductory book on cloud physics
Review: There are very few stand-alone cloud physics text books on the market. More often than not only a chapter is devoted to clouds in a general atmospheric sciences text book, which grossly neglects the complexity of the subject. Fortunately this one does provide a terrific introduction for students/researchers in atmospheric sciences/physics/engineering who want to learn more about clouds. Basic concepts are presented in a consice but often mathy way. Sometimes the empirical equations can throw the readers off a bit. Unfortunately these catches are almost inevitable in cloud physics.

A great merit of this book is its size. A well-designed undergraduate course can definitely go through most of the topics. At the same time there is enough detailed information that the interested instructors and students can develop term projects or simple models using the book as a reference. In all I highly recommend this text as an introduction to cloud physics. Advanced researchers in the field, however, will need a more extensive reference, such as Pruppacher and Klett.

Rating:
Summary: Good Textbook
Review: This book provides a nice introduction to the physics involved with clouds. It is fairly heavy on the math in some chapters and more descriptive in others. It also provides mathematical and descriptive definitions for many common meteorology terms. The problems at the end of the chapters are challenging. The example problems in the text are too few and too simple to allow the concepts to be easily applied in the problems at the end of the chapters, however, all of the neccesary information is present. Overall the book is very helpful.