Weather: How it works and why it matters by Arthur Upgren and
Jurgen Stock, Perseus/ Helix, $25, ISBN 0738202940
IT HAS shaped the planet and us. A wet spring and a warm summer will give us
a surfeit of peaches. A wet summer rots crops. No matter where you live, the
weather is to be watched, often warily. We all want to know more.
To satisfy this enormous appetite, there has recently been a flood of books
on weather and climate. This is good news for those of us in the business of
writing about weather. But pity the poor publishers, always on the lookout for a
fresh approach. They seem to have plumped for three main styles. You can take
your pick between the coffee-table model, the lightweight textbook and the
reportage model, whose dash of journalism produces an extended article of the
kind you might encounter in the London or New York Times.
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Astronomers Arthur Upgren and Jurgen Stock have gone for reportage. They
offer us an anecdotal and at times illuminating analysis. But does this amount
to a balanced and reasonable account of how the weather works and why it
matters?
It鈥檚 a tall order to fulfil in just 18 short chapters, because much of the guts
of Weather is about the intricacies of climate change rather than the
weather itself. After the briefest of descriptions of
the properties of the atmosphere, an admirably clear discussion of the
physiological effects of heat and humidity and a detour to the other planets, we
get a white-knuckle ride through weather lore, hurricanes, mass extinctions and
the ice ages.
This eclectic approach continues through more recent climatic events. Here,
you鈥檒l find yourself hurtling at speed through the Little Ice Age, the impact of
volcanoes, greenhouse gases, the dominant role of the oceans鈥攖hey鈥檙e
remarkably downbeat about El Ni帽o and the Southern Oscillation鈥攁nd
holes in the ozone layer. Finally, they get down to the pressing issues of
global warming and replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. Upgren
and Stock make an impassioned plea for the developed nations, particularly the
US, to do more to implement the Kyoto accords.
Much of this has been well covered elsewhere. I did find, however, that the
examples with which they sustain their arguments do contain some original and
entertaining observations.
It is a pity the words aren鈥檛 supported by better diagrams. At best they are
limited and at worst obscure and misleading. Why show an atmospheric circulation
pattern for a non-rotating Earth, if you are not going to show how it differs in
real life? Do they deliver what they promise in their title Weather: How it
works and why it matters? I鈥檓 not convinced.