The emphasis of Planetary Atmospheres is on comparative aspects of planetary atmospheres, generally meaning comparison with the Earth, including atmospheric composition, thermal structure, cloud properties, dynamics, weather and climate, and aeronomy. The goal is to look for common processes at work under different boundary conditions in order to reach a fundamental understanding of the physics of atmospheres. As part of a general Physics course, the material is chosen to emphasise certain aspects that will be of broad topical interest:
- evolutionary processes, setting the Earth in its context as a planet and a member of the Solar System
- the properties of atmospheres that affect the climate near the surface of each planet
- measurement techniques and models, where the same experimental and theoretical physics is applied under different conditions to investigate and explain atmospheric behaviour.
These might be thought of as the astronomical, environmental, and technical sides of the discipline respectively.
The book covers the basic physics of planetary atmospheres in a single text for students or anyone interested in this area of science. The approach is the same as in the author's previous book Elementary Climate Physics: an overview, followed by more detailed discussion of key topics arranged by physical phenomenon and not planet by planet as usually found in this field. There is an emphasis on acquiring and interpreting measurements, and the basic physics of instruments and models, with key definitions and some historical background in footnotes and in the glossary at the end of the book.

Aimed at the senior undergraduate and graduate level, this textbook fills the gap between general introductory texts offering little detail and very technical, advanced books written for mathematicians and theorists rather than experimentalists in the field.
The result is a concise course in atmospheric radiative processes, tailored for one semester. The authors are accomplished researchers who know how to reach their intended audience and provide here the content needed to understand climate warming and remote sensing for pollution measurement. They also include supplementary reading for planet scientists and problems.
Equally suitable reading for geophysicists, physical chemists, astronomers, environmental chemists and spectroscopists.
A solutions manual for lecturers will be provided on www.wiley-vch.de/supplements.

Monitoring drought’s slow evolution and identifying the end of a drought is still a big challenge for scientists, natural resource managers, and decision makers. This comprehensive two-volume set with contributions from over 200 experts, and featuring case studies representing numerous countries throughout the world, discusses different aspects of drought from types, indices, and forecasting to monitoring, modeling, and mitigation measures. It also addresses how climate change is impacting drought and decision-making concluding with lessons learned about science, policy, and managing uncertainty. Features: Provides a global perspective on drought prediction and management and a synthesis of the recent state of knowledge. Covers a wide range of topics from essential concepts and advanced techniques for forecasting and modeling drought to societal impacts, consequences, and planning Presents numerous case studies with different management approaches from different regions and countries. Addresses how climate change impacts drought, the increasing challenges associated with managing drought, decision making, and policy implications. Includes contributions from hundreds of experts around the world. Professionals, researchers, academics, and postgraduate students with knowledge in Environmental Sciences, Ecology, Agriculture, Forestry, Hydrology, Water Resources Engineering, and Earth Sciences, as well as those interested in how climate change impacts drought management, will gain new insights from the experts featured in this two-volume handbook.

Authored by world-class scientists and scholars, the Handbook of Natural Resources, Second Edition, is an excellent reference for understanding the consequences of changing natural resources to the degradation of ecological integrity and the sustainability of life. Based on the content of the bestselling and CHOICE awarded Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, this new edition demonstrates the major challenges that the society is facing for the sustainability of all wellbeing on planet Earth. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying natural resources are presented in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the main systems: land, water, and air. It reviews state-of-the-art knowledge, highlights advances made in different areas, and provides guidance for the appropriate use of remote sensing data in the study of natural resources on a global scale. The six volumes in this set cover: Terrestrial Ecosystems and Biodiversity; Landscape and Land Capacity; Wetlands and Habitats; Fresh Water and Watersheds; Coastal and Marine Environments; and finally Atmosphere and Climate. Written in an easy-to-reference manner, the Handbook of Natural Resources, Second Edition, as a complete set, is essential for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the science and management of natural resources. Public and private libraries, educational and research institutions, scientists, scholars, and resource managers will benefit enormously from this set. Individual volumes and chapters can also be used in a wide variety of both graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental science and natural science courses at different levels and disciplines, such as biology, geography, Earth system science, ecology, etc.

""What about the twenty-first century? Will we finally accept our responsibilities as guardians of planet Earth, the biological living trust, for the beneficiaries, the children of today, tomorrow, and beyond? Or, will it too be a century of lethal, economic struggle among the polarized positions of the supremely dysfunctional among us? Are they--once again--to be allowed to determine the legacy we, as a society, as a nation, bequeath those who follow us? The choice is ours, the adults of the world. How shall we choose?""

So writes Chris Maser in this compelling study of three interactive spheres of the ecosystem: atmosphere (air), litho-hydrosphere (rock that comprises the restless continents and the water that surrounds them), and biosphere (all life sandwiched in between).

Rich in detail and insightful analogies, "Earth in Our Care" addresses key issues including land-use policies, ecological restoration, forest management, local living, and sustainability thinking. Exploring our interconnectedness with the Earth, Maser examines today's problems and, more importantly, provides solutions for the future.

Meteorology has made significant strides in recent years due to the development of new technologies. With the aid of the latest instruments, the analysis of atmospheric data can be optimized. Computational Techniques for Modeling Atmospheric Processes is an academic reference source that encompasses novel methods for the collection and study of meteorological data. Including a range of perspectives on pertinent topics such as air pollution, parameterization, and thermodynamics, this book is an ideal publication for researchers, academics, practitioners, and students interested in instrumental methods in the study of atmospheric processes.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), this book presents more than 50 chapters highlighting results of the institute s research.

The book provides an up-to-date, in-depth survey across the entire field of atmospheric science, including atmospheric dynamics, radiation, cloud physics, chemistry, climate, numerical simulation, remote sensing, instruments and measurements, as well as atmospheric acoustics.

The authors have provided a readily comprehensible and self-contained presentation of the complex field of atmospheric science. The topics are of direct relevance for aerospace science and technology. Future research challenges are identified."

General circulation models (GCMs), which define the fundamental dynamics of atmospheric circulation, are nowadays used in various fields of atmospheric science such as weather forecasting, climate predictions and environmental estimations. The Second Edition of this renowned work has been updated to include recent progress of high resolution global modeling. It also contains for the first time aspects of high-resolution global non-hydrostatic models that the author has been studying since the publication of the first edition. Some highlighted results from the Non-hydrostatic ICosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM) are also included. The author outlines the theoretical concepts, simple models and numerical methods for modeling the general circulation of the atmosphere. Concentrating on the physical mechanisms responsible for the development of large-scale circulation of the atmosphere, the book offers comprehensive coverage of an important and rapidly developing technique used in the atmospheric science. Dynamic interpretations of the atmospheric structure and their aspects in the general circulation model are described step by step.

Schumann resonance has been studied for more than half a century. The field became popular among researchers of the terrestrial environment using natural sources of electromagnetic radiation-lightning strokes, primarily-and now many Schumann observatories have been established around the world. A huge number of publications can be found in the literature, the most recent collection of which was presented in a special Schumann resonance section of the journal Radio Science in 2007. The massive publications, however, impede finding information about how to organize measurements and start observations of global electromagnetic resonance. Relevant information is scattered throughout many publications, which are not always available. The goal of this book is to collect all necessary data in a single edition in order to describe the demands of the necessary equipment and the field-site as well as the impact of industrial and natural interference, and to demonstrate typical results and obstacles often met in measurements. The authors not only provide representative results but also describe unusual radio signals in the extremely low-frequency (ELF) band and discuss signals in the adjacent frequency ranges.

This thesis presents a study of strong stratification and turbulence collapse in the planetary boundary layer, opening a new avenue in this field. It is the first work to study all regimes of stratified turbulence in a unified simulation framework without a break in the paradigms for representation of turbulence. To date, advances in our understanding and the parameterization of turbulence in the stable boundary layer have been hampered by difficulties simulating the strongly stratified regime, and the analysis has primarily been based on field measurements. The content presented here changes that paradigm by demonstrating the ability of direct numerical simulation to address this problem, and by doing so to remove the uncertainty of turbulence models from the analysis. Employing a stably stratified Ekman layer as a simplified physical model of the stable boundary layer, the three stratification regimes observed in nature- weakly, intermediately and strongly stratified-are reproduced, and the data is subsequently used to answer key, long-standing questions. The main part of the book is organized in three sections, namely a comprehensive introduction, numerics, and physics. The thesis ends with a clear and concise conclusion that distills specific implications for the study of the stable boundary layer. This structure emphasizes the physical results, but at the same time gives relevance to the technical aspects of numerical schemes and post-processing tools. The selection of the relevant literature during the introduction, and its use along the work appropriately combines literature from two research communities: fluid dynamics, and boundary-layer meteorology.

The "European Experiment on the Transport and Transformation of Environmentally Relevant Trace Constituents over Europe" (EUROTRAC) was established in 1986 to tackle the scientific problem and combine the expertise, knowledge and resources in Europe, in order to apply them over a large region covering the greater part of the continent. EUROTRAC is a coordinated multidisciplinary scientific research project involving field measurements, laboratory studies, instrument development and development of comprehensive computer models for the simulation of the physical and chemical processes in the lower atmosphere.

Since the discovery by J. E. Lovelock, R. J. Maggs and R. A. Rasmussen, in 1972, of its ubiquity in sea water, dimethyl sulphide (DMS) , a biologically produced sulphur compound, has been the subject of continuously increasing interest by the scientific community. DMS was immediately recognized as an important component of the biogeochemical sulphur cycle, and is now indicated as the second most important source of sulphur in the atmosphere, after anthropogenic so emission from fossil fuel combustion and 2 industry. DMS reacts rapidly in the atmosphere where it is oxidized to condensable acidic sulphur products; in fact, rainwater acidification, observed in remote areas, is attributed to DMS emissions. The hypothesis of a climatic role of DMS was made already in 1983 by B. Shaw, and by B. C. Nguyen, B. Bonsang and A. Gaudry. In 1987, a study appeared in Nature, in. which R. J. Charlson, J. E. Lovelock, M. O. Andreae and S. G. Warren suggested the possibility of a partial control of the climate by the biosphere through a chain of processes, linking production of DMS by marine phytoplankton with changes in clouds albedo. The publication of this paper triggered a strong debate and stimulated new efforts to describe the various aspects of the DMS cycle in the environment. The paper was timely and added to the discussion on the relative roles of atmospheric sulphur and greenhouse gases in the Earth's radiative budget.

This book presents a collection of reviews prepared for the conference "Atmosphere, Ionosphere, Safety," held in Kaliningrad, Russia, in July 2012. It provides the reader insight into the current developments in the following fields: physics of elementary processes; ionosphere dynamics; ball lightning and aerosol structures; as well as remote detection of the radioactive and highly toxic substances. The diversity of scope presented offers readers an up-to-date overview of trends, questions and their solutions.

Anyone who has experienced turbulence in flight knows that it is usually not pleasant, and may wonder why this is so difficult to avoid. The book includes papers by various aviation turbulence researchers and provides background into the nature and causes of atmospheric turbulence that affect aircraft motion, and contains surveys of the latest techniques for remote and in situ sensing and forecasting of the turbulence phenomenon. It provides updates on the state-of-the-art research since earlier studies in the 1960s on clear-air turbulence, explains recent new understanding into turbulence generation by thunderstorms, and summarizes future challenges in turbulence prediction and avoidance.

Boundary layer meteorology is the study of the physical processes that take place in the layer of air that is most influenced by the earth's underlying surface. This text gives an uncomplicated view of the structure of the boundary layer, the instruments available for measuring its mean and turbulent properties, how best to make the measurements, and ways to process and analyse the data. The main applications of the book are in atmospheric modelling, wind engineering, air pollution, and agricultural meteorology. The authors have pioneered research on atmospheric turbulence and flow, and are noted for their contributions to the study of the boundary layer. This important work will interest atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, and students and faculty in these fields.

Self-focusing has been an area of active scientific investigation for nearly 50 years. This book presents a comprehensive treatment of this topic and reviews both theoretical and experimental investigations of self-focusing. This book should be of interest to scientists and engineers working with lasers and their applications. From a practical point of view, self-focusing effects impose a limit on the power that can be transmitted through a material medium. Self-focusing also can reduce the threshold for the occurrence of other nonlinear optical processes. Self-focusing often leads to damage in optical materials and is a limiting factor in the design of high-power laser systems. But it can be harnessed for the design of useful devices such as optical power limiters and switches. At a formal level, the equations for self-focusing are equivalent to those describing Bose-Einstein condensates and certain aspects of plasma physics and hydrodynamics. There is thus a unifying theme between nonlinear optics and these other disciplines. One of the goals of this book is to connect the extensive early literature on self-focusing, filament-ation, self-trapping, and collapse with more recent studies aimed at issues such as self-focusing of fs pulses, white light generation, and the generation of filaments in air with lengths of more than 10 km. It also describes some modern advances in self-focusing theory including the influence of beam nonparaxiality on self-focusing collapse. This book consists of 24 chapters. Among them are three reprinted key landmark articles published earlier. It also contains the first publication of the 1964 paper that describes the first laboratory observation of self-focusing phenomena with photographic evidence.

The NATO ARW in Irkutsk was an excellent occasion for the coming together of Eastern and Western scientists who are involved in tropospheric science; the workshop has greatly contributed to the scientific and social understanding among the participants from the many different countries. Many new personal contacts were made which will help to strengthen future collaborations. In particular, the Lake Baikal area and the Limnological Institute offer splendid opportunities for environmental research which, in part, is already on going. For most participants it was the first time to see the impressive nature of the Lake Baikal region. Hopefully, there will be a chance for a follow-up event in Siberia where researchers from the East and West can again meet and engage in fruitful scientific dialogue. The book contains extended abstracts of the lectures and the poster presentations presented at the NATO ARW "Global Atmospheric Change and its Impact on Regional Air Quality" Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, Russian Federation, August 21-27, 2001. The ARW was composed of 22 oral presentations by key lecturers and 6 additional shorter oral presentations from participants. In a special poster session the 36 poster contributions were presented and discussed. Unfortunately not all contributors submitted extended abstracts, however, to compensate two contributions have been added from 2 participants who were originally invited but were unable to attend.

This book on electromagnetic resonance phenomena describes a general approach to physical problems, ways to solve them, and properties of the solutions obtained. Attention is given to the discussion and interpretation of formal and experimental data and their links to global atmospheric conditions such as the dynamics of global thunderstorm activity, variations of the effective height of the lower ionosphere, etc.

Schumann resonance is related to worldwide thunderstorm activity, and simultaneously, to global properties of the lower ionosphere. Transverse resonance is predominantly a local phenomenon containing information on the local height and conductivity of the lower ionosphere and on nearby thunderstorm activity.

Transient events in ELF-VLF radio propagation are also treated. These are natural pulsed radio signals and/or abrupt changes of manmade VLF radio signals. The transients associated with cloud-to-ionosphere discharges (red sprites, blue jets, trolls) are discussed, and clarification of the underlying physical ideas and their practical applications to pioneer results achieved in the field recently are emphasised.

The retrieval problems arising in atmospheric remote sensing belong to the class of the - called discrete ill-posed problems. These problems are unstable under data perturbations, and can be solved by numerical regularization methods, in which the solution is stabilized by taking additional information into account. The goal of this research monograph is to present and analyze numerical algorithms for atmospheric retrieval. The book is aimed at physicists and engineers with some ba- ground in numerical linear algebra and matrix computations. Although there are many practical details in this book, for a robust and ef?cient implementation of all numerical algorithms, the reader should consult the literature cited. The data model adopted in our analysis is semi-stochastic. From a practical point of view, there are no signi?cant differences between a semi-stochastic and a determin- tic framework; the differences are relevant from a theoretical point of view, e.g., in the convergence and convergence rates analysis. After an introductory chapter providing the state of the art in passive atmospheric remote sensing, Chapter 2 introduces the concept of ill-posedness for linear discrete eq- tions. To illustrate the dif?culties associated with the solution of discrete ill-posed pr- lems, we consider the temperature retrieval by nadir sounding and analyze the solvability of the discrete equation by using the singular value decomposition of the forward model matrix.

This book describes how to predict and forecast the state of planet Earth's ionosphere under quiet and disturbed conditions in terms of dynamical processes in the weakly ionized plasma media of the upper atmosphere and their relation to available modern measurements and modelling techniques. It explains the close relationship between the state of the media and the radio wave propagation conditions via this media. The prediction and forecasting algorithms, methods and models are oriented towards providing a practical approach to ionospherically dependent systems design and engineering. Proper understanding of the ionosphere is of fundamental practical importance because it is an essential part of telecommunication and navigation systems that use the ionosphere to function or would function much better in its nonappearance on the Earth and on any planet with an atmosphere.

1.1. MISSION BACKGROUND The scientific objective of this magnetospheric physics mission was a detailed in vestigation of the Aurora Borealis, or 'Northern Lights'. The fields experiments (electric and magnetic) were constructed by the University of California at Berke ley (UCB), and Los Angeles (UCLA) respectively. The particles instruments were constructed by UCB and the University of New Hampshire in collaboration with Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory. The instrument data processing unit was provided by UCB. The spacecraft bus, telemetry, and launch services were provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center SMEX office. The science principal investigator is Dr C. W. Carlson of UCB, and the program is managed by the SMEX office. The UCB design philosophy emphasizes the demonstration of design margins set by peer review. As a result, each boom system was extensively tested at a prototype level before the flight units were manufactured. Additionally, the design, assembly and testing of each boom mechanism was conducted by a single engineer solely responsible for its success.

The Earth's atmosphere is often portrayed as a thin and finite blanket covering our planet, separate from the emptiness of outer space. In reality, the transition is gradual and a tiny fraction of the atmophere gases is still present at the altitude of low orbiting satellites. The very high velocities of these satellites ensure that their orbital motion can still be considerably affected by air density and wind. This influence can be measured using accelerometers and satellite tracking techniques. The opening chapters of this thesis provide an excellent introduction to the various disciplines that are involved in the interpretation of these observations: orbital mechanics, satellite aerodynamics and upper atmospheric physics. A subsequent chapter, at the heart of this work, covers advances in the algorithms used for processing satellite accelerometry and Two-Line Element (TLE) orbit data. The closing chapters provide an elaborate analysis of the resulting density and wind products, which are generating many opportunities for further research, to improve the modelling and understanding of the thermosphere system and its interactions with the lower atmosphere, the ionosphere-magnetosphere system and the Sun.

This sixth volume in the ISSI Space Sciences series is the outcome of a process of carrying out the ISSI study project on source and loss processes of magnetospheric plasma. The goal has been to give an authoritative overview of all aspects of the topic in a well-organized form, for active researchers in the field and for young scientists who are starting their research in space physics. In order to represent the full diversity of experience and perspective that exists in the science community, some 50 leading scientists from all over the world were invited to participate in the project and contribute to the text.

The discovery of the earth's radiation belts in 1957 marked the beginning of what is now known as magnetospheric physics. The field has evolved normally from an early discovery phase through a period of exploration and into an era of quantitative studies of the dynamics of magnetized plasmas as they occur in nature. Such environments are common throughout the universe and have been studied in varying detail at the sun, the planets, pulsars, and certain radio galaxies. The purpose of this book is to describe basic quantitative aspects of magnetospheric physics. We use selected examples from the earth's magnetosphere to show how theory and data together form a quantitative framework for magnetospheric research. We have tried to organize the material along the philosophy of starting simply and adding com plexity only as necessary. We have avoided controversial and relatively new research topics and have tried to use as examples physical processes generally accepted as important within the earth's magnetospheric system. However, even in some of our examples, the question of whether the physical process applied to a particular problem is the dominant process, has yet to be answered."