Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, had a dream in which a tree sprouted from his navel.  As the tree grew, its shade covered the earth; as Osman's empire grew, it, too, covered the earth. This is the most widely accepted foundation myth of the...

Following the launch of Sputnik, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a prominent sponsor of scientific research in its member countries, a role it retained until the end of the Cold War. As NATO marks sixty years since the establishment of...

The U. S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program was established in 1990 and is still going strong today. This monograph chronicles the history of the first 20 years of the ARM Program and provides descriptions of its...

This monograph was inspired by the life and work of Professor Michio Yanai, a seminal figure and dedicated mentor in tropical meteorology. Conceived initially at the AMS Michio Yanai Symposium as "lessons" organized around the principal research area...

American environmentalism is defined by its icons: the "Crying Indian", who shed a tear in response to litter and pollution; the cooling towers of Three Mile Island, site of a notorious nuclear accident; the sorrowful spectacle of oil-soaked wildlife...

A hiking trail through majestic mountains. A raw, unpeopled wilderness stretching as far as the eye can see. These are the settings we associate with our most famous books about nature. But Gavin Van Horn isn't most nature writers. He lives and works...

On the Tibetan Plateau, there are wild yaks with blood cells thinner than horses' by half, enabling the endangered yaks to survive at 40 below zero and in the lowest oxygen levels of the mountaintops. But climate change is causing the snow patterns h...

Before you read this book, you have homework to do. Grab a notebook, go outside, and find a nearby patch of nature. What do you see, hear, feel, and smell? Are there bugs, birds, squirrels, deer, lizards, frogs, or fish, and what are they doing? What...

Weather control. Juxtaposing those two words is enough to raise eyebrows in a world where even the best weather models still fail to nail every forecast, and when the effects of climate change on sea level height, seasonal averages of weather phenome...

Fish bones in the caves of East Timor reveal that humans have systematically fished the seas for at least 42,000 years. But in recent centuries, our ancient, vital relationship with the oceans has changed faster than the tides. As boats and fishing t...