An Introduction to Climate, by Trewartha and Horn. I loved this book so much that I purchased two versions: The final 1980 version, and the older 1968 4th edition. It has almost everything a person might want to read about how climates differ, which is actually a lot - they don't just get colder from equator to pole, but vary in beautifu…
An Introduction to Climate, by Trewartha and Horn. I loved this book so much that I purchased two versions: The final 1980 version, and the older 1968 4th edition. It has almost everything a person might want to read about how climates differ, which is actually a lot - they don't just get colder from equator to pole, but vary in beautiful and systematic ways across entire continents. Trewartha's system for classifying these climates is easy to learn, and the maps he provide in the covers are lovely and engaging.
It might seem preferable to read the later version for better images and updated material. But the 1968 version, where he discusses each of his 14 climate types individually, is rich with memorable quotes capable of transporting the reader to strange and distant realms. For example, in his section on the Savannah climate:
“The winter months, or dry season, extend, with a slight variation, from April to November. They are, as I have said, pleasant and healthy in the extreme. Now the traveller and hunter of big game make their appearance; the deciduous trees are leafless; the grasses dry, yellow, and ready for the chance spark or deliberate act which, with the aid of a steady breeze, will turn vast expanses of golden grasslands into so many hideous, bare deserts of heat-tremulous black. All nature seems to be at a standstill, hibernating. The rivers are low. Where, but a few short months since, wide, watery expanses rushed headlong toward the sea . . . there now remain but tranquil, placid channels, flowing smilingly at the bottom of steep, cliff-like banks. . . .
“With October the heat becomes very great... and then Nature arises like a strong man in anger and looses the long pent-up voice of the thunder and the irresistible torrents of the early rains... the change is startling; the paths and roadways choke themselves with a rich clothing of newly sprung grasses, whilst the trees, the extremities of whose twigs and branches have been visibly swelling, now leap into leaf and blossom. The mosses, which for months past have looked like dry, bedraggled, colourless rags, regain once more their vivid, tender green. Now the forest throws off its puritanical greyness and, with an activity and rapidity beyond belief, decks itself in flowers of a thousand gorgeous shades of colour, from chrome-yellow and purple to grateful mauve...
"April comes, and suddenly Nature holds her hand. The swollen rivers and inundated plains shake themselves free from the redundant waters. The grasses have now reached a formidable height. The rains now cease, and the land begins to dry up. Rich greens turn to copper, and brown, and yellow, and little by little, with the advent of May, the winter returns with its sober greyness.”
For anyone uninterested in the particulars of Trewartha's system, these descriptions of Earth's fascinating climates can actually be found online for free in a still earlier version of his book, where he organizes his material in the earlier Koeppen system. I grabbed the above quote from page 272, and there are many more at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.261708/page/n271/mode/2up
An Introduction to Climate, by Trewartha and Horn. I loved this book so much that I purchased two versions: The final 1980 version, and the older 1968 4th edition. It has almost everything a person might want to read about how climates differ, which is actually a lot - they don't just get colder from equator to pole, but vary in beautiful and systematic ways across entire continents. Trewartha's system for classifying these climates is easy to learn, and the maps he provide in the covers are lovely and engaging.
It might seem preferable to read the later version for better images and updated material. But the 1968 version, where he discusses each of his 14 climate types individually, is rich with memorable quotes capable of transporting the reader to strange and distant realms. For example, in his section on the Savannah climate:
“The winter months, or dry season, extend, with a slight variation, from April to November. They are, as I have said, pleasant and healthy in the extreme. Now the traveller and hunter of big game make their appearance; the deciduous trees are leafless; the grasses dry, yellow, and ready for the chance spark or deliberate act which, with the aid of a steady breeze, will turn vast expanses of golden grasslands into so many hideous, bare deserts of heat-tremulous black. All nature seems to be at a standstill, hibernating. The rivers are low. Where, but a few short months since, wide, watery expanses rushed headlong toward the sea . . . there now remain but tranquil, placid channels, flowing smilingly at the bottom of steep, cliff-like banks. . . .
“With October the heat becomes very great... and then Nature arises like a strong man in anger and looses the long pent-up voice of the thunder and the irresistible torrents of the early rains... the change is startling; the paths and roadways choke themselves with a rich clothing of newly sprung grasses, whilst the trees, the extremities of whose twigs and branches have been visibly swelling, now leap into leaf and blossom. The mosses, which for months past have looked like dry, bedraggled, colourless rags, regain once more their vivid, tender green. Now the forest throws off its puritanical greyness and, with an activity and rapidity beyond belief, decks itself in flowers of a thousand gorgeous shades of colour, from chrome-yellow and purple to grateful mauve...
"April comes, and suddenly Nature holds her hand. The swollen rivers and inundated plains shake themselves free from the redundant waters. The grasses have now reached a formidable height. The rains now cease, and the land begins to dry up. Rich greens turn to copper, and brown, and yellow, and little by little, with the advent of May, the winter returns with its sober greyness.”
For anyone uninterested in the particulars of Trewartha's system, these descriptions of Earth's fascinating climates can actually be found online for free in a still earlier version of his book, where he organizes his material in the earlier Koeppen system. I grabbed the above quote from page 272, and there are many more at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.261708/page/n271/mode/2up