The Atmospheric General Circulation

An engaging, comprehensive, richly illustrated advanced undergraduate and graduate level textbook about the atmospheric general circulation, written by leading researchers. This textbook relates fundamental theoretical principles to observations, and contains extensive exercises and online resources.

Part I. Background: 1. Observations and Models; 2. Heuristic models of the general circulation; Part II. Balance Requirements for the General Circulation; 3. The angular momentum balance; 4. Mass balance of atmospheric trace constituents; 5. The balance of total energy; 6. The mechanical energy cycle; Part III. Dynamics of the Zonal Mean Flow: 7. Dynamics of the zonal mean flow; 8. Wave-mean-flow interaction; Part IV. The Stratospheric General Circulation; 9. The global circulation of the stratosphere; 10. Wave-mean flow interaction in the tropical stratosphere; Part V. The Zonally Varying Extratropical Tropospheric Circulation; 11. The boreal winter zonally-varying climatology; 12. The high frequency extratropical transients; 13. Low-frequency extratropical transients; Part VI. The Tropical General Circulation; 14. The annual mean circulation of the tropics; 15. Deep convection; 16. The seasons in the tropics; 17. El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO); 18. Intraseasonal variability of the tropical general circulation; 19. Higher frequency tropical weather systems; 20. Warm core tropical vortices; 21. Diurnal and higher frequency variability of the global circulation; Appendix A. Space and time averaging operations; Appendix B. The zonal momentum balance; Appendix C. Methods of identifying teleconnection patterns; Appendix D. Scaling and application of the Weak Temperature Gradient Approximation; Appendix E. Math symbols and abbreviations; Appendix F. Extended figure captions; Appendix G. Exercise answers.