General Climatology 3

Abstract

General Climatology 3 is volume 3 of the series World Survey of Climatology, which consists of 15 volumes containing review articles on a broad range of topics. General Climatology 3 contains four chapters: ‘Human Bioclimatology,’ ‘Agricultural Climatology,’ ‘City Climate,’ and ‘Technical Climatology.’ Each of these chapters will be briefly described here.‘Human Bioclimatology,’ the first chapter, was authored by E. Flach and provides a survey of the effects on the human organism of the physical conditions at the earth's surface. It contains four main sections. A section entitled ‘Light and Life’ deals with the effects of solar radiation on man and contains much interesting information on the response of the human eye and human skin to radiation at various frequencies. ‘Air and Life’ discusses the composition of air and its effect on human health and performance, including discussions of the effects of altitude, aerosols, and noxious trace gases. ‘Temperature and Life’ discusses how the body responds to temperature and how it maintains its heat budget under the variety of conditions to which it falls subject and considerable discussion is given to objective ways to characterize air conditions that give an accurate measure of their impact on the body. This discussion leads naturally into the final section, ‘Bioclimatological Evaluation Systems,’ which addresses the problem of how to classify a particular site according to its overall suitability to human habitation.