Tropical Meteorology ― An Introduction

This book is designed as an introductory course in Tropical Meteorology for the graduate or advanced level undergraduate student. The material within can be covered in a one-semester course program. The text starts from the global scale-view of the Tropics, addressing the zonally symmetric and asymmetric features of the tropical circulation. It then goes on to progressively smaller spatial and time scales – from the El Nino Southern Oscillation and the Asian Monsoon, down to tropical waves, hurricanes, sea breezes, and tropical squall lines. The emphasis in most chapters is on the observational aspects of the phenomenon in question, the theories regarding its nature and maintenance, and the approaches to its numerical modeling. The concept of scale interactions is also presented as a way of gaining insight into the generation and redistribution of energy for the maintenance of oscillations of a variety of spatial and temporal scales.

T.N. Krishnamurti is Professor of Meteorology at Florida State University. He obtained his PhD in 1959 at the University of Chicago. His research interests are in the following areas: high resolution hurricane forecast (tracks, landfall, and intensity), monsoon forecasts on short, medium range, and monthly time scale and studies of interseasonal and interannual variability of the tropical atmosphere. As a participant in the meteorology team in tropical field projects, he has been responsible for the acquisition and analysis of meteorological data, which extends over most of the tropical atmosphere over several years and is now being assembled and analyzed. Phenomenological interests include hurricanes, monsoons, jet streams, and the meteorology of arid zones. Dr. Lydia Stefanova is an assistant research scientist at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS). Her current research interests are in the area of understanding the nature and manifestations of climate variability and long term climate change, and understanding, quantifying, and improving the quality and usefulness of climate prediction and projection products. Her research includes the analysis of large scale and regional climate variability, dynamical climate forecasting with a focus on near-surface processes at various scales and the applications of climate forecasts to hydrological, ecological and agricultural modeling. She has worked on ENSO, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation as modulators of US climate. Dr. Vasu Misra is an associate Professor at COAPS whose research interests are in climate variability and predictability. He works with a variety of numerical models to understand climate variations and climate change. These numerical tools include regional atmospheric models, atmospheric general circulation models and coupled ocean-atmosphere models. He is keen on understanding the predictability of a model, and the challenges of real-time climate prediction. Phenomenologically he has worked on ENSO, the South American and the South Asian Monsoons, Tropical Atlantic and Intra-American seas climate variability, and US hydroclimate.