Customer Reviews

First Course in Atmospheric Radiation [Rental Textbook]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent introductory book on atmospheric radiation that fills a previously huge void in the books available on this topic. Written in a style that differs from any textbook I've ever experienced. The book covers a wide spectrum of issues related to atmospheric radiation, but doesn't overwhelm the reader in the process. Practical examples and applications of the theories and ideas presented abound. A very refreshing...dare I say enjoyable...scientific book.

This book was used in my graduate atmospheric radiation class. It was far supperior to the book used in my undergrad class (wallace and hobbs introduction to atmospheric sciences) not that W&H was a bad book but this book is much more focused since it is not as broad as W&H book.

Good aspects of this book is that it starts with a good fundemental background before it delves into the real meat of the course (being radiative calculations for both long wave and short wave theory). The book is very easy to read for someone with introductory knowledge of radiative theory and is not much tougher without this introductory knowledge. The figures are clear and concise and the topics are well organized.

Downfall of this book is the excersices presented to reinforce topics. Most of the excercises are just plug and chug or are descriptive problems that really only require one to read the previous section. more problems and problems that require more thinking would be benificial but the author already aknowledges that this was a week point of the book.

Over all the book was written very well and was easy to understand. It is a great tool for anyone interested in atmospheric radiation, either on an introductory level or as a complement to ones library. Given the other books available for a course on radiation this one ranks near or on the top.

And as a University of Oklahoma Meteorology alumni, I must say, Boomer Sooner.

This is among the best scientific textbooks I have read. I wish I could give it six stars. There are interesting points scattered throughout the book, I even got a couple of new perspectives from an early chapter on electromagnetism. The section on radiative heating and cooling due to trace gases (Chapter 10) particularly grabbed me, because of its implications for Global Warming (excuse me, Climate Change). I liked the book so much I even read the Appendix, and sure enough, there was an interesting discussion of the rigorously correct but counterintuitive and computationally troublesome Extinction Paradox. A thouroughly excellent book.

I bought this book to supplement the textbook for a radiation course I was enrolled in. This should have been the book used in the course as it was very clear and made some of the more complex topics easy for an advanced undergraduate audience. Some of the problems could be slightly improved, but this is on the same level as the thermodynamics book by this author. 'A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation' will be on my shelf for many years as a handy reference when I need some quick, accurate, and understandable radiation information.

This is the clearest of several books that I purchased to learn how climate scientists calculate radiative forcing as a function of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The author's prose and illustrations excel. Undergraduate level math and physics are prerequisites. In my case, I needed to relearn some of what I studied over 40 years ago. That was part of the fun.

Great text book for a intro to radiation or physical meteorology course. The author provides wonderful explanations and applications of subjects dealing with atmospheric radiation.