Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future

by Jason Smerdon

This second edition of Climate Change is an accessible and comprehensive guide to the science behind global warming. Exquisitely illustrated, the text is geared toward students at a variety of levels. Edmond A. Mathez and Jason E. Smerdon provide a broad, informative introduction to the science that underlies our understanding of the climate system and the effects of human activity on the warming of our planet.

Mathez and Smerdon describe the roles that the atmosphere and ocean play in our climate, introduce the concept of radiation balance, and explain climate changes that occurred in the past. They also detail the human activities that influence the climate, such as greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions and deforestation, as well as the effects of natural phenomena. Climate Change concludes with a look toward the future, discussing climate model projections, exploring the economic and technological realities of energy production, and presenting a view of the global warming challenge through the lens of risk. Each chapter features profiles of scientists who advanced our understanding of the material discussed. This new edition expands on the first edition’s presentation of scientific concepts, making it ideal for classroom use for a wide swath of undergraduate and masters students with both science and nonscience backgrounds.

Genres: Climate Change, Textbooks, Science, Environment

520 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

Reviews

[Daithi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great introduction to climate change if you're looking for a book that explains the science of it from the ground up.

The book starts out explaining the basics of how our climate system currently works; how the atmosphere and ocean move and interact, how phenomena like the El Niño–Southern Oscillation work, the carbon cycle etc. This helps to make sense of the actual "climate change" part of the book which comes next. You'll learn about greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect, radiation balance and radiative forcing, Milankovitch theory, historical climate etc. This is followed by an explanation of the possible consequences of climate change; how it may impact drought, storms, sea level, the Arctic, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. And finally there is some insight into how climate modelling works, what kind of possible outcomes we might expect, based on these models, and what some of our options are for energy production going into the future.

In addition to the main text, there are demarcated sections throughout the book containing "historical notes" and "back of the envelope calculations". The historical notes are little biographical introductions to important historical figures in climate science. The back of the envelope calculations try to illustrate or give a sense of scale to some of the numbers discussed in the text by way of some (usually) simple calculations. There are also sections denoted simply as "boxes". They explain some of the science in more detail. There is also a summary at the end of each chapter, which I found helpful.

Is this book suitable for a layperson? I think so. Some background in physics and chemistry helps for some sections, but with a bit of patience I think a layperson can get a lot out of the book. For the most part, the most difficult parts are confined to the aforementioned "boxes". I didn't understand some of them, so I skipped them, but I don't feel that I suffered much as a result of doing so. So, if you're a layperson, there may be parts that are too difficult, but my opinion is that the bulk of what's being communicated in this book is accessible with a little perseverance.

[Kent Lundgren]

Nice book if you want to know more about the Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future.