Editor Adam A. Scaife is head of Monthly to Decadal Prediction at the UK Met Office and honorary visiting Professor at Exeter University. His research interests include new evidence for long-range predictability of winter weather and his work has helped us understand how the freezing European winters of the 1960s gave way to mild, wet winters in the 1990s, and how effects like El Niño and solar variability affect our climate.

If you only have 30 seconds, there is time using this book to make sense of the science behind the seeming vagaries of the weather, the controversies, predictions and forecasts for climate change that shape our day-to-day experiences of the great outdoors. Ever since Aristotle first tried to explain the forces that seem to fall from the heavens, meteorology has opened up the study of weather, and caused disputes over the reasons why seasons change, where precipitation falls, why winds blow and when the sun shines. From halcyon days to hurricanes, super cells to silver linings, global warming to giant hailstones, here is the ultimate guide to a near universal preoccupation: whats the weather like?