The Cloud Book - How to Understand the Skies

by Richard Hamblyn, Met Office (Contributor)

Learn how to understand the skies with this comprehensive cornerstone guide to cloudspotting.
Clouds have been the object of fascination throughout history, their fleeting magnificence and endless variability providing food for thought for scientists and daydreamers alike. 
Clouds may have many individual shapes, but there are a few basic forms. In this definitive guide to the clouds and the skies, Richard Hamblyn introduces you to all the different cloud species. The Met Office Cloud Book will enable you to identify individual clouds, skies and phenomena. You will also be able to track their likely changes over time and predict the implications they have for the weather you may experience.  
Produced in association with the Met Office – the world’s premier weather forecasting bureau – all things to do with the origin and development of a cloud are here. Whether you are looking at a giant cumulonimbus or a tiny shred of stratus factus, an everyday occurrence or a fleeting rarity, your cloudspotting will be expertly informed and much more satisfying with this handy reference guide. This book will enable you to not only identify individual clouds and skies as they might appear at any given moment, but also to track their likely changes over time, and thus predict weather patterns.
This new edition brings this classic and bestselling book completely up to date, including 12 new cloud types only recently officially recognised by the World Meteorological Organization. Many of these previously only had informal names, but their new Latin classification brings them into the fold of officially adopted global meteorological terms. It also includes a new foreword from the Met Office's Chief Meteorologist and an updated section on climate change and the role that clouds might play in shaping future conditions on Earth.
The Met Office Cloud Book includes a detailed introduction on the history of cloud classification and is illustrated with stunning images from around the globe. Take it with you on walks and have it handy in the garden so that you can enjoy sky-gazing every day. This is the only guide to cloud classification that you will ever need.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Reference, Textbooks

176 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2008

About the author

Richard Hamblyn studied at the universities of Essex and Cambridge, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on 18th-century topographical writing. His first book, The Invention of Clouds (2001) told the story of Luke Howard, the amateur meteorologist who named the clouds in 1802; his other publications include The Cloud Book (2008) and Extraordinary Clouds (2009), both published in association with the (UK) Met Office; Data Soliloquies (2009), co-written with the digital artist Martin John Callanan; and Terra: Tales of the Earth, a collection of stories about major natural disasters. His anthology, The Art of Science: A Natural History of Ideas, was published by Picador in October 2011. It is a wide-ranging collection of readable science writing from the Babylonians to the Higgs boson.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a coffee-table book of the prettiest/most dramatic cloud pictures available. Instead it is a book that explains the classifications of clouds used by the global meteorological community, with the photographs acting primarily as illustrations. As such they are very good - and some of them actually are pretty or dramatic. The explanations, with the aid of the glossary are probably accessible to most people, definitely so if the reader has prior familiarity with basic amateur meteorology, including terms like troposphere, cold front, depression, convection, etc. And indeed the text will give people who need to be able to make short-term weather forecasts based only on information directly observable by their senses (e.g. hikers/mountaineers) much useful knowledge. At the end there is a section on rare cloud types and optical atmospheric phenomena that can and does indulge the urge towards the dramatic more than the main body of the book and a brief essay on clouds in relation to anthopogenic climate change, a topic of great complexity and importance that is also difficult to study.

Given its aims, this is a very good book.

[Brie · Rating 3 out of 5]

im so whipping this out at parties

[An Te · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great content. And a supremely dynamic and interesting topic. The format of the book could have been better. Words on one side and pictures on the other. It all became a little confused at times. Although, I think that is in the most part attributable to my lack of 'picture' book reading and exposure to clouds in general, other than cirrus, cumulonimbus clouds.

Richard make its an appealing and exciting science. Lots of information for a novitiate or a cloudspotter to engage with on a daily basis! And I like the little extra information on cloud formation and climate change. Really interesting last section that embraces uncertainties we all have in scientific endeavours.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice photos. Not a book to read from start to end though. Most of the writing just describes the different types of clouds.

[Carol Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reference book on clouds!

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting guide, but the pictures can definitely do with an HD update.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely introduction to the science of clouds

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cloud 9 and counting

This is a wonderful book - factual for those wanting to learn more about cloud classification but also fascinating with lore and historical anecdotes (cloud 9 was the highest one time). It also contains information on climate change which makes one pause. This is a book you will dip into for years to come - excellent picture illustrations - I would have loved more of each type of classification. I would also love a book that i could put my photos into and find out the names of them. I am getting better after reading this though.

[William Barrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who would have thought that clouds could be divided into twenty-seven classifications. In The Cloud Book: How to Understand the Skies Richard Hamblyn briefly recounts the history of cloud physics and identification then describes the three major types of clouds each divided into nine cloud states. Each cloud state possesses an identifying abbreviation and unique international symbol. Photographs for each cloud state punctuate the text so readers can see exactly what Hamblyn is talking about. He also provides information about what meteorological significance each cloud state might have for helping in the prediction of the weather. This little volume opens up the world of cloud watching. Keep it handy for your own cloud gazing. Read and enjoy!

[Bob King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of photos to help anyone identify all many types of clouds. Descriptions convey how constantly active clouds are as they morph from one variety into another. Includes short discussions of the aurora and rare cloud types.

[Carolyn Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a blue sky thinker so gazing up is normal for me - this book helped me make sense of what I see. I'm now a certified cloud bore. Long car journeys don't have to be tedious thanks to this book - you can analyse the skyscape in front of you and anticipate what's coming on the horizon.

[Kenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book if you for cloud-spotting, less good if you're interested in the science behind clouds.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK as a high level cloud classification guide.
Don't expect to gain understanding on underlying physics and evolution between classes.

[Two Readers in Love · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and informative. The next best thing to lying on a picnic blanket and watching the clouds go by...

[KP · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the author has an incredible understanding of the cloud classification presented, but i came out feeling more befuddled than when I started! I had just read Gavin P-P's book, with a world wide pool of photos to choose from.
The best part of this book was the examples of accessory features and rare cloud formations and optical illusions.