Climate Change is geared toward a variety of students and general readers who seek the real science behind global warming. Exquisitely illustrated, the text introduces the basic science underlying both the natural progress of climate change and the effect of human activity on the deteriorating health of our planet. Noted expert and author Edmond A. Mathez synthesizes the work of leading scholars in climatology and related fields, and he concludes with an extensive chapter on energy production, anchoring this volume in economic and technological realities and suggesting ways to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Climate Change opens with the climate system fundamentals: the workings of the atmosphere and ocean, their chemical interactions via the carbon cycle, and the scientific framework for understanding climate change. Mathez then brings the climate of the past to bear on our present predicament, highlighting the importance of paleoclimatology in understanding the current climate system. Subsequent chapters explore the changes already occurring around us and their implications for the future. In a special feature, Jason E. Smerdon, associate research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, provides an innovative appendix for students.
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- Part I. The Climate System
- 1. The Atmosphere
- 2. The World Ocean
- 3. Ocean–Atmosphere Interactions
- 4. The Carbon Cycle and How It Influences Climate
- Part II. Climate Change and Its Drivers
- 5. The Concept of Radiation Balance, a Scientific Framework for Thinking About Climate Change
- 6. Radiative Forcing, Feedbacks, and Some Other Characteristics of the Climate System
- 7. Learning from the Climate of the Distant Past
- Part III. Consequences of Climate Change
- 8. The Climate of the Recent Past and Impacts on Human History
- 9. Observing the Change
- 10. Greenland, Antarctica, and Sea-Level Rise
- Part IV. The Future
- 11. Climate Models and the Future
- 12. Climate Change Risk in an Unknowable Future
- 13. Energy and the Future
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
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