For most of history, humans have made every possible effort to accurately foretell the weather, evolving from the use of guesswork, rule of thumb, and signs in the sky to the development of contemporary forecasting techniques drawn from two scientific disciplines, climatology and meteorology.

The Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather 2nd Edition provides a comprehensive history of the development of this practice, as well as provides a thoroughly up-to-date resource with many additions, revisions, and updates to this field of ever-increasing importance since the publication of the First Edition in 1996. In over 330 entries, the Encyclopedia covers essential topics that include the processes that produce weather, the circulation of the atmosphere that produces the world's climates, classification of climates, important scientific concepts used by climatologists and meteorologists, as well as the history atmospheric sciences, biographies of noteworthy contributors to the field, and significant weather events, from extreme tropical cyclones to tornadoes to hurricanes. New to this edition are articles on headline-grabbing topics that include the Kyoto Protocol, global warming, tradable permits, and extreme weather.

Each entry is fully cross-referenced, to both definitions of weather- and climate-related terms as well as additional sources for further study. Over 300 photographs, maps, and charts offer highly evocative depictions of various weather and climate conditions around the world and across time. The Encyclopedia is also equipped with historical examples of disasters caused by bad weather, milestones in the development of the atmospheric sciences, and the geological time scale round out this survey, making it a comprehensive and authoritative resource for anyone doing research in this area or working in the field.