Physics and Chemistry of Clouds

Clouds affect our daily weather and play key roles in the global climate. Through their ability to precipitate, clouds provide virtually all of the fresh water on Earth and are a crucial link in the hydrologic cycle. With ever-increasing importance being placed on quantifiable predictions – from forecasting the local weather to anticipating climate change – we must understand how clouds operate in the real atmosphere, where interactions with natural and anthropogenic pollutants are common. This textbook provides students – whether seasoned or new to the atmospheric sciences – with a quantitative yet approachable path to learning the inner workings of clouds. Developed over many years of the authors’ teaching at Pennsylvania State University, Physics and Chemistry of Clouds is an invaluable textbook for advanced students in atmospheric science, meteorology, environmental sciences/engineering and atmospheric chemistry. It is also a very useful reference text for researchers and professionals.

Author Biography

Dennis Lamb is Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. Professor Lamb worked as a researcher for nearly fourteen years at the Desert Research Institute (Reno) before embarking on a teaching career at Pennsylvania State University. With more than forty years of observational and laboratory research experience and more than twenty years teaching cloud physics and atmospheric chemistry at both undergraduate and graduate levels, he now realizes that the best path toward understanding clouds is to understand water itself, at the molecular level. The deeper the understanding, the greater becomes the appreciation of clouds as gate keepers in the water cycle and energy budget of Earth. This book is the culmination of his career studying the physics and chemistry of water and clouds. Hans Verlinde is a Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. He is an observational meteorologist who has studied clouds in the Antarctic, at the equator and in the Arctic. He is currently the site scientist for the US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Climate Research Facility at Barrow on the North Slope of Alaska, and he teaches classes in atmospheric thermodynamics, cloud physics, mesoscale meteorology and radar meteorology at Pennsylvania State University.