I'm gonna be honest I never read the textbook. If you just go over the lecture slides and understand the main themes of the class well enough to write about them you'll do fine. A lot of people skipped lecture, but Raphael tells some cool stories sometimes.

I love professor Raphael. She is a great professor, and this is a super interesting class. It was one of my favorites at UCLA. Her tests are a bit tricky, and you need to study for them appropriately. They include definitions, short answers and an essay question. Really great class, but make sure you dedicate the appropriate amount of time and effort to it. Worth taking.

This class was surprisingly easy. I did not have much background knowledge about climatology but most of the concepts were fairly easy to grasp. The professor did a good job of explaining the overarching ideas that continued throughout the course. Minimal work and effort required to do well, but still learned a lot. Would recommend this course to anyone looking for a fairly easy supplemental upper division class.

Class consisted of 2 homework assignments (20%), a midterm (35%), and the final (45%). The two homework assignments were very easy but did require a little bit of time. Exams are a lot of writing - the format is five definitions (these are in bold in her slides), two short answers, and one essay. The book was nice to reference but she mainly lectures from her slides and all test material comes from the slides. This class ended up being a lot easier than I anticipated.

selling book, very cheap
310-200-3804

Selling the book for Tropical Climatology 102. 562-204-4772

This class was difficult but fair. As long as you keep up with readings you should be fine.

I am the same person writing the previous review. So this time I am going to talk about Geog 102.
Format is pretty much the same as Geog 104, but this class only has 2 assignments (20% total), 1 midterm (35%) and final (45%). The assignment is pretty straightforward, no calculations but some drawing/reading graphs/stats.
As I said in the previous post, professor raphael doesn't curve the grade. I did really bad in the midterm but I studied really hard for the final this time. I had a great improvement.
Both Professor Raphael and her grader are fair graders. Although she gave everyone a shock in the midterm (mean: 73 this time),she wants everyone in her class be ready for the final.
Again, she is willing to answer question during her office hour and email.
Conclusion: after having two quarters of professor Raphael, textbook is needed as a reference to her lecture. She posted up the lecture in the class website but class attendence would be recommended because her explaination on the material helps a lot. She draws on the board sometimes and they are not on the posted lecture.
I wish I can be her student again in the future!