The Cloud Book: How to Understand the Skies in Association with the Met Office

A guide to the clouds, helping you to identify various cloud types and related phenomena, and understand its implications for the weather. It follows a logical progression from low clouds to the high stratus clouds, and on to special clouds. It features an introduction on the history of cloud classification.|Clouds have been the object of fascination throughout history, their fleeting magnificence and endless variability providing food for thought for scientists and daydreamers alike. Clouds may have many individual shapes, but there are a few basic forms. In this definitive guide to the clouds and the skies, Richard Hamblyn introduces you to all the different cloud species. The Cloud Book will enable you to identify individual clouds, skies and phenomena. You will also be able to track their likely changes over time and predict the implications they have for the weather you may experience. Produced in association with the Met Office – the world's premier weather forecasting bureau – all things to do with the origin and development of a cloud are here. Whether you are looking at a giant cumulonimbus or a tiny shred of stratus factus, an everyday occurrence or a fleeting rarity, your cloud-spotting will be expertly informed and much more satisfying with this handy reference guide. The Cloud Book includes a detailed introduction on the history of cloud classification and is illustrated with stunning images from around the globe. Take it with you on walks and have it handy in the garden so that you can enjoy sky-gazing every day. This is the only guide to cloud classification that you will ever need and is the ideal daytime partner for our must-have book on the night sky – The Star Book by Peter Grego.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; The Classification System & its History; Glossary; Low Clouds; Medium Clouds; High Clouds; Special Clouds and Other Phenomena; Clouds and Climate Change; Quick Cloud Identifier; Acknowledgments; Index.

About the Author :
Dr Richard Hamblyn is the author of The Invention of Clouds (2002),which won the LA Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He is also the author ofThe Cloud Book (2008), Extraordinary Clouds (2009) and Extraordinary Weather (2012). He is currently Writer in Residence at the Environment Institute, University College London.