Microclimate and Local Climate

This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive treatment of the variables and processes of microclimate and local climate, including radiation balance and energy balance. It describes and explains the climate within the lower atmosphere and upper soil, the region critical to life on Earth. Topics that are covered include not only the physical processes that affect microclimate, but also biological processes that affect vegetation and animals, including people. A geographic tour of the microclimates of the major ecosystems around the world is included. All major biomes and surface types, including urban areas, are examined, and the effects of climate change on microclimate are described. This book is invaluable for advanced students and researchers in climatology in departments of environmental science, geography, meteorology, agricultural science, and forestry.

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Part I. Controls of Microclimate: 2. Microclimatic elements; 3. Methods of observation and instrumentation; 4. Radiation; 5. The energy balance; 6. Monitoring and modeling of radiation and energy balance via remote sensing and land surface models; 7. Microclimates of different vegetated environments; 8. Microclimates of physical systems; 9. Bioclimatology; Part II. Local Climates: 10. Urban climates; 11. Topoclimatic effects on microclimate; Part III. Environmental Change: 12. The effects of climate change on microclimates; Problems; Glossary; Symbols; SI units and conversions; Index.

Roger G. Barry was Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1977 to 2008, and Professor of Geography from 1968 to 2010. He was appointed a University of Colorado Distinguished Professor in 2004. From 2012 to 2014 he was Director of the International CLIVAR Project Office, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. His awards include the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Nobel Peace Prize (as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team), a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, a Humboldt Prize Fellow, and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Environmental Sciences (RAEN). He has directed 31 Masters and 36 PhD degrees. He is the author or co-author of more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and many textbooks, including Atmosphere, Weather and Climate, 9th edition (with R. J. Chorley, 2010), Mountain Weather and Climate, 3rd edition (Cambridge, 2008), Synoptic and Dynamic Climatology (with A. M. Carleton, 2011), The Arctic Climate System, 2nd edition (with M. C. Serreze, Cambridge, 2014), The Global Cryosphere: Past, Present and Future (with T. Y. Gan, Cambridge, 2011), and Essentials of the Earth's Climate System (with E. A. Hall-McKim, Cambridge, 2014).
Peter D. Blanken is a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, several book chapters, and is a co-author of Straits of Mackinac Weather (with Sandy Planisek, 2015). He has served on the editorial board of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society for over a decade.