The Weather and Climate

Shaun Lovejoy is Professor of Physics at McGill University, Montréal, and has been a pioneer in developing and applying new ideas in nonlinear dynamics to the geosciences since the late 1970s. This has included multifractals, generalized (anisotropic) scale invariance, universal multifractals, space-time multifractal modeling of geofields (especially clouds, precipitation and topography). He has published over 200 papers applying these ideas to the Earth and environmental sciences. The unifying theme of this work is that when the notion of scaling is generalized to include anisotropy and multifractality, many key geofields display scaling behaviour over enormous ranges of scale; and that this nonclassical extreme variability is a new paradigm for the geosciences. In addition to these scientific contributions, Professor Lovejoy has actively promoted nonlinear processes in geophysics by co-founding the Nonlinear Process section at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) and the Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics journal. He has been Vice-chair and subsequently Chair of the Nonlinear Geophysics focus group at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) since 2004.

A new method of modeling the atmosphere, synthesizing data analysis techniques and multifractal statistics, for atmospheric researchers and graduate students.

Preface; Acknowledgements; Acronyms and abbreviations; 1. Introduction; 2. Classical turbulence, modern evidence; 3. Scale by scale simplicity: an introduction to multiplicative cascades; 4. Empirical analysis of cascades in the horizontal; 5. Cascades, dimensions and codimensions; 6. Vertical stratification and anisotropic scaling; 7. Generalized scale invariance and cloud morphology; 8. Space-time cascades and the emergent laws of the weather; 9. Causal space-time cascades: the emergent laws of waves, predictability and forecasting; 10. The emergent laws of macroweather and the transition to the climate; 11. The climate; References; Index.