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Sources for Chapter 11

The books, Web sites, journal articles, and interviews listed on this page are sources of information other than facts and concepts found in most beginning college-level meteorology textbooks, which the author used or that could help readers better understand the concepts described. For more on various topics, including further reading and links to related Web sites, follow the links labeled “Explorations.” Links labeled “Outtakes” are to text from early drafts of the book that were dropped before publication.

In the notes below “the author” refers to Jack Williams, author of The AMS Weather Book.

Pages 260–263
  • Air pollution research, including the graphic on page 261 and the profile of Belay B. Demoz on page 263: Based on the author’s interviews with scientists and students at the Beltsville, Maryland, research site; NASA’s Aura Mission Web site; telephone conversations and e-mail exchanges with Belay B. Demoz and David Whiteman, of NASA; and a NASA news story on Demoz and the WAVES project, “Don't Quit Your Day Job.”
Page 264
  • Air pollution:
    • Coal smoke as antidote to the miasmas of night air: Peter Thorsheim, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006), 17.
    • Coal smoke as pollution: Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 24–43.
    • James R. Fleming and Bethany R. Knorr, “History of the Clean Air Act: A Guide to Clean Air Legislation Past and Present,” The American Meteorological Society Web site (n.d.).
    • London notorious for polluted fog: For example, see the United Kingdom Met Office’s article “The Great Smog of 1952.”
Pages 264–265
  • Response to a disaster: Jeff Gammage’s October 18, 1998, Philadelphia Inquirer story about the fatal air pollution episode in Donora, Pennsylvania, is on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Web page about the disaster with other accounts.
Pages 265–266
Page 266
  • Acid rain: Effects on lakes in the Adirondack Mountains of New York noticed by the author in the 1960s on backpacking trips. A Water Encyclopedia article, “Acid Rain,” quotes New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in 1998, telling Congress: “As far back as the 1960s, fishermen in the Adirondacks began to complain about more than ‘the big one that got away.’ Fish, once abundant in the pristine, remote Adirondack lakes, were not just getting harder to catch. They were gone.”
Page 267
  • The Clean Air Act: The U.S. EPA’s Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act Web site.
  • The Air Quality Index: Several agencies, including the EPA and NOAA, have contributed to the government’s AIRNow Web site, which offers access to national air quality information, including forecasts and background materials on how the index works and how to use it.
Pages 268–269
Page 270
Pages 270–271
  • Staying warm: Information on frostbite and hypothermia is from the sections on these in Chapter 24 of the Field Manual of the U.S. Antarctic Program, available for download as PDF files on the U.S. Antarctic Program Web site, and Ned Rozell, “The Physics of Life at Forty Below,” Alaska Science Forum Web site.
  • Exploration and wind chill: Paul Siple, 90° South: The Story of the American South Pole Conquest (New York: Putnam, 1959), 70–71.
Page 272
  • Wind chill chart: The U.S. National Weather Service Wind Chill Index page has the formula used to calculate wind chill for Fahrenheit degrees and wind speeds in miles per hour. At the bottom of this page, you’ll find an online calculator to calculate wind chill both in U.S. and metric units.
  • Dangers of sunburn: The U.S. EPA’s SunWise Web site has information on the dangers of sunburn, what the index means, and UV index forecasts.
Pages 272–275

book jacket
The AMS Weather Book:The Ultimate Guide to America’s Weather
Jack Williams
With Forewords by Rick Anthes and Stephanie Abrams
©2009, 368 pages, 140 color plates, 70 halftones 8-1/2 x 10-7/8
Cloth $35.00 ISBN: 9780226898988



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