A Pocket Guide to WEATHER

Today, I take a break from the 5-day fictional marathon and focus on a non-fiction book, continuing my reading marathon. The book is called A Pocket Guide to Weather. It covers all things from climate change to types of precipitation to disastrous weather to the future climates. 5/5!

Section by section, here are the summaries:

Section I (11 pgs.)
This section is about both weather and climate, but mostly climate. It explains the nine different climates of the world: tropical, subtropical, temperate, arid, semi-arid, Mediterranean, mountainous, sub-arctic, and polar.

Section II (59 pgs.)
This section is the longest out of all of the sections in this book. It explains the global weather patterns, clouds, seasons, and the types of weather. Further detail of those subjects gives us topics such as warm/cold/occluded fronts, the jet stream, air pressure, the water cycle, types of clouds, and precipitation in all forms (rain, snow, hail, fog, etc.)

Section III (21 pgs.)
This section explains about weather patterns, but this time these are local patterns. It contains explanations of continental and maritime climates, oceanity, altitude, winds, pollution, and wind chill. The last pages are about animal adaptations to different types of environment such as the temperate, polar, arid (desert), and tropical environments.

Section IV (36 pgs.)
This section explains about violent types of weather. You can already think of the topics right now. To check yourself if you’ve covered the types, these extreme types of weather are thunderstorms, hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons, tornadoes, waterspouts, floods, heat waves, droughts, bush fires, and snow-related weather (avalanches, blizzards, hailstorms, etc.)

Section V (10 pgs.)
This may seem the shortest section in the book, but it is not. Anyway, this section is about weather opticals.
If you don’t know what I mean, these should help you, Mirages, rainbows, coronas, auroras, and haloes all count in this chapter.

Section VI (15 pgs.)
This section is about the history of weather and also the beliefs of ancient peoples about weather. Descriptions include the invention of the Celsius scale, beliefs about weather gods, Robert Fitzroy, early weather devices, 20th century weather devices, and weather involved in warfare and the performing arts.

Section VII (17 pgs.)
This section explains today’s weather forecasting methods. Subjects of this chapter include the usage of radar and satellite, thermometers, barometers, anemometers, monitoring precipitation, and the broadcasting of weather forecasts.

Section VIII (8 pgs.)
This section is by far the shortest section. It explains about how people use and manipulate the weather. Topics include cloud “seeding” and how people use the weather using renewable resources. Breaking down into the renewable resource topic, we get the use of sunlight, water, and air for energy. Of course, almost everything in life has a downside. The section explains the impact of the usage of these methods of energy.

Section IX (11 pgs.)
This section explains the climates of the past. These topics are simply the Paleozoic/Mesozoic eras, the Ice Age, the “Little Ice Age” and the Milankovitch Cycles.

Section X (30 pgs.)
This section was the most interesting to me because this explains the future climates. It explains climate change, El Niño and La Niña, acid rain, CFCs, more storms, heat waves, global dimming, and disease spreading due to global warming. All of them can happen (and some of them have already happened) if we keep using fossil fuels and adding to the greenhouse effect. This is the most appealing to me because I don’t want the world to be affected severely by global warming.

This book is a must for those who are learning about weather, but you can also read it for enjoyment.

Here’s a way more precise rating for this book: infinity out of infinity!