Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather / Edition 1

by Mark Monmonier

Overview

Weather maps have made our atmosphere visible, understandable, and at least moderately predictable. In Air Apparent Mark Monmonier traces debates among scientists eager to unravel the enigma of storms and global change, explains strategies for mapping the upper atmosphere and forecasting disaster, and discusses efforts to detect and control air pollution. Fascinating in its scope and detail, Air Apparent makes us take a second look at the weather map, an image that has been, and continues to be, central to our daily lives.

"Clever title, rewarding book. Monmonier . . . offers here a basic course in meteorology, which he presents gracefully by means of a history of weather maps." —Scientific American

"Mark Monmonier is onto a winner with Air Apparent. . . . It is good, accessible science and excellent history. . . . Read it." —Fred Pearce, New Scientist

"[Air Apparent] is a superb first reading for any backyard novice of weather . . . but even the veteran forecaster or researcher will find it engaging and, in some cases, enlightening." —Joe Venuti, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

"Monmonier is solid enough in his discussion of geographic and meteorological information to satisfy the experienced weather watcher. But even if this information were not presented in such a lively and engaging manner, it would still hook most any reader who checks the weather map every morning or who sits happily entranced through a full cycle of forecasts on the Weather Channel."—Michael Kennedy, Boston Globe

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226534237
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/15/2000
Series:	Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing Ser.
Edition description:	1
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mark Monmonier is distinguished professor of geography at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Seeing and Forecasting
2. Seeing and Understanding
3. Weather by Wire
4. Looking Up
5. Looking Ahead
6. Downwind Dangers
7. Looking Down
8. Looking Around
9. Spreading the News
10. Weather Channels and Web Sites
11. Hindsight As Insight
12. Managed Myopia
Appendix: Web-site Addresses
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Weather maps are familiar to millions of viewers of weather presentations on television and to readers of daily weather reports in newspapers... How and why such maps came to be produced makes a good story, told with great enthusiasm in this amply illustrated book.
—Times Literary Supplement

Raymond Hide