This book has been written for students of meteorology and of related sciences at the senior and graduate level. The goal of the book is to provide the background for graduate studies and individual research. The second part, Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere, will appear shortly. To a considerable degree we have based our book on the excellent lecture notes of Professor Karl Hinkelmann on various topics in dynamic meteorology, including Prandtl-layer theory and turbulence. Moreover, we were fortunate to have Dr Korb's outstanding lecture notes on kinematics of the atmosphere and on mathematical tools for the meteorologist at our disposal.

Quite early on during the writing of this book, it became apparent that we had to replace various topics treated in their notes by more modern material in order to give a reasonably up-to-date account of theoretical meteorology. We were guided by the idea that any topic we have selected for presentation should be treated in some depth in order for it to be of real value to the reader. Insofar as space would permit, all but the most trivial steps have been included in every development. This is the reason why our book is somewhat more bulky than some other books on theoretical meteorology. The student may judge for himself whether our approach is profitable. The reader will soon recognize that various interesting and important topics have been omitted from this textbook. Including these and still keeping the book of the same length would result in the loss of numerous mathematical details.