"Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and the Environment" by C. Donald Ahrens

Whether you use this book, it's never been easier to better understand the underlying principles of meteorology and appreciate the dynamic nature of the inevitable weather phenomena that continually influence our lives.

This book written for college-level students taking an introductory course on the atmospheric environment.
The main purpose of the text is to convey meteorological concepts in a visual and practical manner, while simultaneously providing students with a comprehensive background in basic meteorology.
Each chapter contains a summary of the text, a list of important concepts, self-tests with answers (which include multiple choice, true/false, matching, short answer, and/or fill in the blank), and a list of additional readings.

Brief Contents
1 Earth and Its Atmosphere
2 Energy: Warming the Earth and the Atmosphere
3 Seasonal and Daily Temperatures
4 Atmospheric Humidity
5 Condensation: Dew, Fog, and Clouds
6 Stability and Cloud Development
7 Precipitation
8 Air Pressure and Winds
9 Wind: Small-Scale and Local Systems
10 Wind: Global Systems
11 Air Masses and Fronts
12 Middle-Latitude Cyclones
13 Weather Forecasting
14 Thunderstorms and Tornadoes
15 Hurricanes
16 Earth's Changing Climate
17 Global Climate
18 Air Pollution
19 Light, Color, and Atmospheric Optics
APPENDIX A: Units, Conversions, Abbreviations, and Equations
APPENDIX B: Weather Symbols and the Station Model
APPENDIX C: Beaufort Wind Scale (Over land)
APPENDIX D: Humidity and Dew-Point Tables
APPENDIX E: lnstantWeather Forecast Chart
APPENDIX F: Changing GMT and UTC to local Time
APPENDIX G: Global Average Annual Precipitation
APPENDIX H: Standard Atmosphere
APPENDIX I: Hurricane Tracking Chart
APPENDIX J: Adiabatic Chart
Glossary
Additional Reading Material
Index