Climate Process and Change
Climate Process and Change
$62.99
USDThis is the first major textbook to encompass the true complexity of climate change. Whilst 'greenhouse' warming dominates most of the literature, Ted Bryant presents numerous reasons for the observed climate change of the past century. He argues that changes in climate, more dramatic than those of the last 150 years, have been a predominant aspect of the Earth's climate over the past two million years. Bryant highlights human impacts on climate other than 'greenhouse' gases, including sulphate air pollutants, dust and urban heat islands. He also explains the natural components forcing climate change.
Bryant presents, in simple terms, the processes that drive the Earth's present climate system. He outlines the nature and reasons for temperature fluctuations over millennia, including recent human-induced climate change. Finally, he discusses the impact of climate change upon human health and the world's ecosystems.
- Bryant has a track record as a textbook author with his highly successful Natural Hazards
- examines historical climate change, and the effect of sulphates, dust, urban 'heat islands', in addition to greenhouse warming
- looks at impacts of climate change on health and ecosystems
Reviews & endorsements
"It is rare these days to find a book about climate change that is indifferent to the popular simplistic view and detached from impassioned warnings of impending environmental disasters. This is what makes Climate Process and Change different from the plethora of publications on the subject. It should be essential reading for all inquisitive undergraduates who are interested in a balanced treatment of an important subject." New Zealand Geographer
"The key feature that sets this text apart is the perspective of climate change on a larger timescale...raising awareness of uncertainties in historial observations, trends, and the complex and nonlinear relationships between observations and theory." Gregory S. Jenkins, EOS
"...could be used as a reference or supplemental textbook for the useful figures, tables, references, and Web sites..." Gregory S. Jenkins, EOS
Product details
October 1997Paperback
9780521484404
228 pages
279 × 210 × 12 mm
0.52kg
72 b/w illus. 23 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Climate history of the Earth and background concepts
- Part I. Processes:
- 2. Climatic processes
- 3. Scales of heat and mass transfers in the atmosphere
- 4. The role of oceans
- Part II. Change:
- 5. Scales of climate change: Pleistocene to modern
- 6. Causes of climate change
- 7. Human effects on climate
- Part III. Impacts:
- 8. Health impacts of climate change
- 9. Ecosystem impacts of climate change
- 10. Epilogue
- Index.
