Preface

Summary

As graduate students in the 1960s and 1970s, the authors became attracted to the exciting world of the atmosphere and climatology through both lectures and textbooks. The approach to climatology at that time is best described as “global descriptive,” where we were introduced to climate patterns and regimes across the Earth, and what then were known as the explanations behind them. One of the best books for studying advanced climatology was The Earth's Problem Climates (University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), by Glenn Trewartha, a well-known and respected climatologist from the University of Wisconsin. In this book we explored, both geographically and systematically, the climate patterns and anomalies across the continents. We were introduced to the nature of the Atacama Desert, the climatic anomalies of northeast Brazil, the temperature extremes of central Siberia, and the monsoon variations in India and China, among other aspects. Trewartha's book was reprinted in 1981, but sadly the new version did not properly include new research and findings on global climate patterns. For example, despite recognition by the mid 1970s of its essential importance to global climatic variability, there was no discussion of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation!

During the decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there has been an explosion in climatic research and a new breadth and depth of understanding about climatology and the atmosphere. There have also been a number of excellent books published in the area of climatology.