Military Weather

Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practise her other calling: as an unofficial shrink. For years, she has supported her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but then her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. Sylvia has become famous for her prescient podcast, 'Hell and High Water', and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right wingers worried about the decline of western civilization.

From the crystalline perfection of the snowflake to the transfer of energy from the Sun, science lies at the heart of the weather and our understanding of it. In recent years, weather science has moved to the leading edge with advanced modelling, versatile use of satellite data and a better understanding of mathematical chaos. This is a true example of hot science at work.

Weather and Warfare dramatically retraces the meteorological forces during battlefield engagements that doomed or saved civilizations. In 1588 more than half of the Spanish Armada, on its way around northern Britain, was destroyed by storms in retreat back to Spain. Napoleon's attack on Russia was stopped cold by winter weather, as was Hitler's siege of Leningrad. In WWI, it was all-quiet on the western front during mud season.