Human Impacts on Weather and Climate

Rating:
Summary: A fresh and balanced presentation.
Review: I find this book an outstanding introduction to issues related to human impact on weather and climate. Authors elected to divide the discussion into three main parts, dictated primarily by the scale of perturbation. The first part deals with some of the most striking examples of controlled human impact on weather: modification of clouds, hail suppression and modification of tropical cyclones. The presentation is clear, with many interesting historical and technical details and is inspirational for people interested in cloud processes. The second part shows that humankind modified already weather and climate at local and regional scale. Such human impacts are: anthropogenic emissions of aerosols and gases, urban induced changes in precipitation and weather, and impacts caused by land use. Authors did a good job is showing that regional scale atmospheric perturbations are by far the most intense and have clear fingerprints in observations as well as in numerical models. Finally, the third part has a broad presentation of human impact on global climate. This is well illustrated with climatic effects of anthropogenic aerosols, possible nuclear winter scenarios, and with the greenhouse theory. I think students as well as a broad spectrum of readers interested in Earth sciences will benefit from reading this book.