Summary

Tropical Climatology Second Edition Glenn R. McGregor, The University of Birmingham, UK Simon Nieuwolt (deceased) Formerly Adjunct Professor, University of Guelph, Canada Climatology, the scientific study of climate, is not only concerned with explaining why a location's or region's climate is like it is but also with describing the nature and availability of the climate resource for a wide range of human activities. This subject is of great relevance to the tropics as climate in many ways controls the lives and economic activities of the approximately 2400 million people living in tropical regions. Tropical climates also have effects that reach far beyond the limits of the regions where they actually prevail: the global general circulation is largely driven by the export of considerable amounts of heat energy from tropical to extratropical latitudes: a large part of all atmospheric water content originates from the tropics, and intermittent tropical phenomena, like El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), not only influence the climates over extensive tropical areas but many parts of the extratropics. The climate sensitivity of populations and economic production in the tropics also makes these regions especially vulnerable to any negative impacts arising from human-induced climate change. Tropical Climatology aims to provide a geographical viewpoint on the physical processes in the tropical atmosphere: to offer explanations of how a location's climate is a product of these processes and to highlight the implications of tropical atmospheric behaviour and climate change for those living in the tropics. This is the second edition of the book and reflects the substantial developments in the field of tropical climatology which have taken place over the two decades since the publication of the first edition. New and updated material has been included on the nature of the general tropical circulation, the monsoons, the quasi-biennial oscillation, the 40-50 day tropical circulation, the El Nino Southern Oscillation phenomenon and its climatic impacts, tropical disturbances, the characteristics of regional tropical climates and climate change in the tropics. The readership of the book remains essentially the same as that for which the first edition was intended; second to third year students in geography and the environmental sciences who have some background in climatology. The updated reference list will, however, provide an entry point for non-specialist postgraduates into the field of tropical climatology.