The contents of this volume are based on the U.S.-Japan Seminar on the Dynamics of the Middle Atmosphere, held at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 8-12 November 1982. The seminar was jointly sponsored by the United States National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The participants included eleven scientists from the U.S.A., eleven from Japan, and one from Australia. In recent decades the meteorology of the middle atmosphere has become a subject of increasing research activity. Much of this acti­ vity has been stimulated by concern about possible anthropogenic per­ turbations of the stratospheric ozone layer, and also possible linkages with climatic fluctuations. Observational and theoretical efforts to study the dynamics, physics, and chemistry of the middle atmosphere have recently intensified on an international basis with the beginning of the Middle Atmosphere Program (MAP). Thus the Seminar was very timely.