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Acidification in tropical countries
AtmosphericResearch,28 ( 1992) 187-194
187
Elsevier SciencePublishers B.V., Amsterdam
Book Reviews Acidification in Tropical Countries, H. Rodhe and R. Herrera (Editors), Volume 36 in the SCOPE Series, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, U.K. 1988. Hardcover, xviii + 450 pp., £65,-. Anthropogenic emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides in Europe and North America have led to the acidification of soils, surface- and groundwaters and have induced adverse effects on the aquatic biota, vegetation, building materials, atmospheric visibility and even h u m a n health. Acidification of the environment is generally regarded as one of the most serious consequences of m o d e m industrial development. Although there are still problems in establishing the cause and effects relationships, the environmental impacts of acidification in the developed countries is unequivocal. The work that has been done in North America and Europe begs the question: Has acidification become a problem in the other parts or the world and how susceptible are the ecosystems in these regions to the particular phenomenon? Intuitively, tropical ecosystems should be vulnerable to acidification and hence are of particular interest. In April 1986, the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) sponsored a workshop in Caracas (Venezuela) to evaluate the current situation pertaining to the acidity of rainfall in some tropical countries. The papers in the volume under review were derived from the reports presented at the Caracas meeting. The data presented at the workshop suggest that in many tropical countries, the emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from industrial sources exceed or match the fluxes from natural processes. The first section of the book contains an excellent overview of current knowledge on acidification and regional air pollution in the tropics. The five background papers in Section II cover such topics as the atmospheric sulfur and nitrogen cycles in the tropics, the effects of acid deposition on tropical terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and acid corrosion of structures and cultural property in tropical climate. The third (and last) section contains case studies dealing with the problems of acidification in some tropical countries (Brazil, Nigeria, Venezuela, China, India, Bangladesh and Australia). It is clear that the volume addresses only snippets of the problem and cannot claim to be a comprehensive or full-scale treatment of a very important topic. Some of the data became dated during the long delay in getting the papers into print. Nevertheless, Acidification in Tropical Countries represents the first attempt to assess the current and potential effects of regional air pollution on some of 0169-8095/92/$05.00 © 1992 ElsevierSciencePublishers B.V. All rights reserved.
188
the more sensitive ecosystems of the world. It should be on the shelf of any library that deals with the environment. JEROME O. NRIAGU (Burlington, Ont. )
AsymptoticModelingofAtmosphericFlows.Translated from French by L. Bry. Springer-Vedag, Berlin, Germany, 1990. Approx. 380 pp. Hardcover. Price: DM170.- ISBN 3-540 19404-5. The growing efficiency of numerical tools allows one to study problems in geophysical fluid mechanics whose solution could not be envisaged even a few years ago. For such studies it is necessary, through a rigorous analysis, to identify the parameters which play the most important role for a given phenomenon, and discard those which are of less importance. This essentially consists of what is now called "asymptotic modeling". There are very few books dealing with the topics of Zeytounian's book: the last may be that of Pedlosky ( 1979 ). As Pedlosky, Zeytounian places himself at a deterministic level and considers the geophysical flows essentially via the waves associated to these flows. This approach justifies the notion of filtering which is introduced at the beginning of the book. Such a notion is, for a physicist, closely related to the perception of any phenomenon through a dynamical wave analysis. The equations of motion of geophysical flows are presented in the first two chapters. These equations are systematically written in nondimensional variables, so that the medium's properties appear through the associated characteristic numbers, e.g. gravity (Froude number), compressibility (Mach number), etc. From the obtained equations, the author deduces several degeneracies by letting one or several parameters go to zero, while some combinations of the parameters remain bounded. This technique is very powerful in order to obtain "significant" degeneracies in various problems of mathematical physics. In the following chapters (3 to 13 with the exception of 5 and 6) a great variety of filterings used in meteorology is presented. Let us cite in particular (i) the internal gravity waves and the corresponding approximations (solenoidal, Boussinesq, deep convection); (ii) the geostrophic flows and the Rossby waves; (iii) the quasigeostrophic flows and the problem of adjustment; (iv) several practical problems such as: the lee wave analysis, the general circulation, boundary layer and Ekman layer problems, and some problems of local winds. Two chapters (5 and 6) devoted to classical singular perturbation methods, are inserted in these chapters. A great quality of the book is the attempt at a unified analysis for a large variety of problems. Many of these problems are familiar to the author, Who quotes one or several of his own works in each chapter. The reading of the
187
Elsevier SciencePublishers B.V., Amsterdam
Book Reviews Acidification in Tropical Countries, H. Rodhe and R. Herrera (Editors), Volume 36 in the SCOPE Series, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, U.K. 1988. Hardcover, xviii + 450 pp., £65,-. Anthropogenic emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides in Europe and North America have led to the acidification of soils, surface- and groundwaters and have induced adverse effects on the aquatic biota, vegetation, building materials, atmospheric visibility and even h u m a n health. Acidification of the environment is generally regarded as one of the most serious consequences of m o d e m industrial development. Although there are still problems in establishing the cause and effects relationships, the environmental impacts of acidification in the developed countries is unequivocal. The work that has been done in North America and Europe begs the question: Has acidification become a problem in the other parts or the world and how susceptible are the ecosystems in these regions to the particular phenomenon? Intuitively, tropical ecosystems should be vulnerable to acidification and hence are of particular interest. In April 1986, the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) sponsored a workshop in Caracas (Venezuela) to evaluate the current situation pertaining to the acidity of rainfall in some tropical countries. The papers in the volume under review were derived from the reports presented at the Caracas meeting. The data presented at the workshop suggest that in many tropical countries, the emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from industrial sources exceed or match the fluxes from natural processes. The first section of the book contains an excellent overview of current knowledge on acidification and regional air pollution in the tropics. The five background papers in Section II cover such topics as the atmospheric sulfur and nitrogen cycles in the tropics, the effects of acid deposition on tropical terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and acid corrosion of structures and cultural property in tropical climate. The third (and last) section contains case studies dealing with the problems of acidification in some tropical countries (Brazil, Nigeria, Venezuela, China, India, Bangladesh and Australia). It is clear that the volume addresses only snippets of the problem and cannot claim to be a comprehensive or full-scale treatment of a very important topic. Some of the data became dated during the long delay in getting the papers into print. Nevertheless, Acidification in Tropical Countries represents the first attempt to assess the current and potential effects of regional air pollution on some of 0169-8095/92/$05.00 © 1992 ElsevierSciencePublishers B.V. All rights reserved.
188
the more sensitive ecosystems of the world. It should be on the shelf of any library that deals with the environment. JEROME O. NRIAGU (Burlington, Ont. )
AsymptoticModelingofAtmosphericFlows.Translated from French by L. Bry. Springer-Vedag, Berlin, Germany, 1990. Approx. 380 pp. Hardcover. Price: DM170.- ISBN 3-540 19404-5. The growing efficiency of numerical tools allows one to study problems in geophysical fluid mechanics whose solution could not be envisaged even a few years ago. For such studies it is necessary, through a rigorous analysis, to identify the parameters which play the most important role for a given phenomenon, and discard those which are of less importance. This essentially consists of what is now called "asymptotic modeling". There are very few books dealing with the topics of Zeytounian's book: the last may be that of Pedlosky ( 1979 ). As Pedlosky, Zeytounian places himself at a deterministic level and considers the geophysical flows essentially via the waves associated to these flows. This approach justifies the notion of filtering which is introduced at the beginning of the book. Such a notion is, for a physicist, closely related to the perception of any phenomenon through a dynamical wave analysis. The equations of motion of geophysical flows are presented in the first two chapters. These equations are systematically written in nondimensional variables, so that the medium's properties appear through the associated characteristic numbers, e.g. gravity (Froude number), compressibility (Mach number), etc. From the obtained equations, the author deduces several degeneracies by letting one or several parameters go to zero, while some combinations of the parameters remain bounded. This technique is very powerful in order to obtain "significant" degeneracies in various problems of mathematical physics. In the following chapters (3 to 13 with the exception of 5 and 6) a great variety of filterings used in meteorology is presented. Let us cite in particular (i) the internal gravity waves and the corresponding approximations (solenoidal, Boussinesq, deep convection); (ii) the geostrophic flows and the Rossby waves; (iii) the quasigeostrophic flows and the problem of adjustment; (iv) several practical problems such as: the lee wave analysis, the general circulation, boundary layer and Ekman layer problems, and some problems of local winds. Two chapters (5 and 6) devoted to classical singular perturbation methods, are inserted in these chapters. A great quality of the book is the attempt at a unified analysis for a large variety of problems. Many of these problems are familiar to the author, Who quotes one or several of his own works in each chapter. The reading of the