Author Description

This major review of monsoon meteorology reflects the most recent research on the subject. There are fifteen essays written especially for the book, each by a different author or set of authors. As the first major review of monsoon research since the Global Weather Experiment in 1978-79, it starts from a section which includes a synthesis of the planetary scale aspects of the northern summer monsoon, followed by the regional aspects of the summer monsoon over India, China and Japan. The next section focuses on the synoptic, planetary and regional aspects of the northern winter monsoon. The role of physical processes such as the influences of differential heating between the land and the ocean, the thermal and mechanical effects of the mountains of the monsoon region and the significance of the clouds are presented in the third section. The final section contains summaries on the dynamical theories and computational modelling efforts.