Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
Mesoscale weather systems, such as thunderstorms, mesoscale convective systems, supercells, fronts, jet streaks, gravity waves, severe downslope winds, low-level jets, sea breezes, heat island circulations, and clear air turbulence, are responsible for numerous natural disasters, such as blizzards, torrential rain, flash flooding, damaging winds, and aviation accidents. Thus, a fundamental understanding of their underlying dynamics, the mesoscale dynamics, is essential to help forecast their occurrence. Although textbooks are available in individual subdisciplines such as cloud dynamics, storm dynamics, convection, and synoptic-dynamic meteorology, there are no textbooks which take a systematic approach and cover a more complete spectrum of the mesoscale dynamics. In particular, due to the rapid advancements in research in the past three decades or so, there is a need for a mesoscale dynamics textbook.
The text is presented in four parts: wave dynamics, moist convection, front dynamics, and mesoscale modeling. There are no clear boundaries among these parts. In the opening chapters, the basic equations governing mesoscale weather systems and their approximations are introduced. The wave dynamics include wave generation and maintenance, orographically forced flow, and thermally forced flow. The moist convection part includes mesoscale instabilities, isolated storms, mesoscale convective systems, and orographic precipitation. Traditionally, tropical cyclones are not viewed as a mesoscale phenomenon due to the wide range of scales involved in their genesis, movement, circulations, and convective systems. However, we may also view a hurricane or typhoon as an intense, rotating convective system once it has formed.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.