This book is designed as an introductory course in Tropical Meteorology
for the graduate or advanced level undergraduate student. The material
within can be covered in a one-semester course program. The text starts
from the global scale-view of the Tropics, addressing the zonally
symmetric and asymmetric features of the tropical circulation. It then
goes on to progressively smaller spatial and time scales - from the El
Niño Southern Oscillation and the Asian Monsoon, down to tropical waves,
hurricanes, sea breezes, and tropical squall lines. The emphasis in most
chapters is on the observational aspects of the phenomenon in question,
the theories regarding its nature and maintenance, and the approaches to
its numerical modeling. The concept of scale interactions is also
presented as a way of gaining insight into the generation and
redistribution of energy for the maintenance of oscillations of a
variety of spatial and temporal scales.