The book Weather: How it works and Why it Matters by Arthur Upgren and Jurgen Stock is an interesting and rather diverse text on weather. It covers not only the basics, like humidity, dew point, wind chill and temperature, but also the physics of weather, the lore of weather, and weather on other planets. It examines ice ages and their causes and looks at the effects of extraterrestrial impacts, like the ancient Chicxulub astroid that destroyed the dinosaurs and the modern day Tunguska comet impact in Siberia in 1908.

Although I'd no doubt that the authors were very competent in science (Arthur Upgren is Professor of Astronomy at Wesleyan University and Senior Research Scientist at Yale University and his coauthor Jurgen Stock is an astronomer on the faculty of Hamburg and Case Western Reserve Universities), I wasn't quite sure that either was necessarily qualified as a meteorologist. Actually I found it interesting that two such well trained astronomers would even be interested in writing a book about weather and climate. It was with the final chapters (15-18) of the book that their purpose in doing so became apparent.

The problem of global warming and world wide environmental destruction is an issue with which many scientists, regardless of their pedigree, have become more and more involved. Well known and influential authors such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Leaky have added their voices to a growing chorus of well trained individuals attempting to call our attention and that of our governments to the dangers of continued abuse of nature and the planet. In this instance, it isn't so much the "how it works" part of the title that is the actual point of the book, but the "why it matters" portion that is overwhelmingly so.

The bibliography is well rounded and well worth spending a little time rounding up the entries. It includes titles that cover, in even greater detail, many of the concepts introduced by the present authors. Included are Aherns' Essentials of Meteorology, Alvarez's T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Imbrie and Imbrie's Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery, Leaky and Lewin's The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Mankind, Stommel and Stommel's Volcano Weather: The Story of the Year without a Summer, 1816, among others. Some of these I have already read and enjoyed, others I will definitely look to include in my reading list.

Although one might find a better and more detailed discussion of the actual complexities of weather and climate, this book covers a broad spectrum of issues having to do with it and brings to the fore the impact that our individual decisions have on our world.

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