-This comprehensive text and reference work on numerical weather prediction covers for the first time, not only methods for numerical modeling, but also the important related areas of data assimilation and predictability. It incorporates all aspects of environmental computer modeling including an historical overview of the subject, equations of motion and their approximations, a modern and clear description of numerical methods, and the determination of initial conditions using weather observations (an important new science known as data assimilation). Finally, this book provides a clear discussion of the problems of predictability and chaos in dynamical systems and how they can be applied to atmospheric and oceanic systems. Professors and students in meteorology, atmospheric science, oceanography, hydrology and environmental science will find much to interest them in this book, which can also form the basis of one or more graduate-level courses.

-1. Historical overview
2. The continuous equations
3. Discretization of the equations
4. Introduction to the parameterizations of subgrid-scale physical processes
5. Data assimilation
6. Atmospheric predictability and ensemble forecasting; References

Appendix A. The early history of numerical weather prediction
Appendix B. List of acronyms
Appendix C. Coding and checking the linear tangent and adjoint models
Appendix D. Post processing of numerical model output to obtain station weather forecasts.

-Eugenia Kalnay
University of Maryland, College Park

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