Chapter 1 provides an overview of the main features of the general circulation and climate dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere troposphere, including the role of weather systems. The aim of the chapter is to explain, in broad terms, the physical mechanisms shaping Southern Hemisphere tropospheric climate. Many treatments of the atmospheric general circulation place a strong emphasis on the governing equations, as expressed in terms of budgets and fluxes, which invariably leads to an emphasis on the zonal mean. Chapter 1 takes a complementary and more phenomenological perspective starting from regional climatic features. This aligns with the current interest in understanding regional aspects of climate change and provides a foundation for other chapters in the monograph. The chapter begins by describing these regional climatic features through spatial maps of key dynamical fields. It then explains those features in terms of phenomena anchored in dynamical theory, such as monsoon circulations and storm tracks, including their zonal asymmetries. The discussion covers tropical, subtropical, and extratropical tropospheric phenomena and the connections between them. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how the regional phenomena discussed here are expected to respond to climate change.