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

by Jason Smerdon

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 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.

Genres: Climate Change, Textbooks, Science, Environment

318 pages, Hardcover

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.