WHATEVER THE WEATHER

A survey of weather, and some of its causes, through four seasons.

The authors do thread in a few glances at climate change and weather extremes, but in general they present a benign picture of the sorts of weather typical to each season in temperate, Northern Hemisphere locales and how the sun, winds, and ocean currents influence them. Their efforts to keep things simple go amiss, though, when they create the impression that all deserts are hot, all winters everywhere are “cold, cloudy, and damp,” and all rainforests, tropical. They also leave readers who wonder why, say, auroras only appear near the poles or even why the sky is blue no wiser. (A simplistic claim that tropical rainforests create their own rain could use some unpacking too.) Adding occasional schematic arrows to show movements of wind or water, Attia sends two children—one brown-skinned, the other pale, with straight, black hair in a pageboy—through outdoorsy scenes of sun, rain, and snow before leaving them floating in space, looking down at our big blue marble. The low-key approach has its appeal, but more-dramatic treatments of the topic, like Isabel Otter’s Weather (2019), will give younger audiences a better sense of what they’re in for in the near future.

A bland, sketchy overview that also lacks that now-necessary sense of urgency.