The balance requirement approach covered in Part II provides a reasonable explanation of how the atmosphere satisfies the various budget constraints imposed by the conservation of mass, momentum, total energy, and mechanical energy, but it does not go very far in addressing such questions as:

• Why is there a single pair of tropospheric jet streams located around 30∘N/S?

• Why do the eddies transport angular momentum poleward, across 30∘N/S, maintaining the trade‐wind and westerly wind belts?

• Why do the diagnoses based on the angular momentum balance in Chapter 3 and the energy balance in Chapter 5 yield the same configuration of mean meridional circulations?

This chapter gives an overview of EU policy-making, outlining what types of policy the EU makes, in which areas it is important and in which areas it plays a smaller role, and how the EU’s policy-making role has evolved over the past decades. In doing so, it sketches the broader picture within which the subsequent chapters on agenda-setting, decision-making and implementation of EU policies can be placed. The text seeks to give students a firm grasp of the broader patterns of EU policy-making, while providing examples of specific policies in order to make more tangible what EU policies look like. After outlining the varying involvement of the EU in different policy areas, the chapter provides an overview of both the expenditure and the revenue side of EU budgetary policies. This is followed by a discussion of EU regulatory policies, both in relation to the internal market and beyond. After this general introduction, the chapter zooms in on the development of two policy areas in which EU policy-making has shown important developments over the past decades: Economic and Monetary Union and foreign policy.

This chapter outlines the EU’s seven official main institutions (the European Council, Council of the European Union, European Parliament, Commission, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors and European Central Bank) and the different executive, legislative and judicial powers that are allocated to them. It describes their tasks and the way they have organized their work. The EU’s combination of institutions is unique and can be characterized as ‘mixed government’ or as ‘a polity with many principals’. It is nevertheless based upon a common model for organizing democratic systems, namely that of consensualism, and aims to disperse power and constrain the use of it.

This chapter outlines the different analytical perspectives that can be used to study the EU. It first discusses three different integration theories (neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism and postfunctionalism) and their spin-offs. These theories seek to explain why and how countries have decided to establish European cooperation and what role key actors (governments, interest groups, the public, politicians and civil servants) play in this. The chapter subsequently outlines theories of EU politics which seek to explain the actual functioning of the EU. In doing so it places a strong emphasis on the comparative politics approach, where the functioning of the EU is analysed by employing theories and concepts that are used in analysing domestic political systems. Additionally the chapter also discusses multi-level governance and federalism as two additional ways to understand EU politics. These theories provide complimentary insights in to the EU’s functioning. The choice to employ a certain theoretical perspective depends upon the types of questions asked and the actors that are of interest.

The realization that correlation statistics could provide useful information on the three‐dimensional structure and evolution of the transients (i.e., variations about the seasonally varying climatological mean state) dates back al least 100 years, but at that time studies based on this methodology were largely restricted to the analysis of seasonal or annual mean time series at individual stations. Notable examples include studies of Exner, and Walker and Bliss.

The middle atmosphere encompasses the stratosphere and the mesosphere. Its geometric midpoint at ∼50 km corresponds roughly to the stratopause, the top of the stratosphere and the level of strongest heating (per unit mass) due to the absorption of solar ultraviolet radiation by ozone molecules.

This chapter zooms in on the dynamics of decision-making in the EU. Whereas Chapter 4 sketches the structures and procedures used to take decisions in the EU, this chapter discusses the processes that take place within those structures and procedures. It distinguishes between three types of decision (history-making, policy-setting and policy-shaping) that show different decision-making dynamics. In relation to history-making decisions, the chapter provides an introduction to negotiation theory and identifies the various strategies actors use in negotiations. In relation to policy-setting decisions, it discusses the dynamics of interinstitutional decision-making, using Tsebelis’ veto player theory. This is followed by a discussion of the role of different types of policy networks in EU policy-making. The chapter ends with sections on the role of technocracy in the EU (using the better regulation programme as an example) and the debate about flexibility and inertia in EU policy-making (engaging with Scharpf’s joint-decision trap thesis).