Product Description

This volume provides an up-to-date presentation of climate change and its implications for society. Burroughs, an expert on the subject, begins with balanced coverage of the physical principles of the global climate, its behavior on all timescales, and the evidence for and consequences of past change. He then reviews the methods used to measure climate change and the statistical methods for analyzing data. A comprehensive guide, the volume also explores the causes of change and how this behavior can be modeled. The final sections discuss predictions of future climate change and the economic and political debate surrounding its prevention and mitigation. This is a valuable undergraduate textbook for a wide range of courses, including meteorology, oceanography, environmental science, earth science, geography, history, agriculture and social science. It will also appeal to a wider general audience of readers in search of a better understanding of climate change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #798158 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 314 pages

Review
"The book is best appreciated by those with an understanding of science, particularly earth sciences, and will be of interest to many following the climate change discussions." American Meteorlogical, Society Oct 2001

"Burroughs is to be congratualated for having written a serious and up-to-date book that competently surveys many highly technical aspects of modern climate science but manages to do so in a nonmathematical manner." American Meteorlogical Society, June 2002

About the Author
William Burroughs is a professional science writer, and has published many books on weather and climate including Climate Change in Prehistory, Does the Weather Really Matter?, Weather Cycles, The Climate Revealed, and Watching the World's Weather (all with Cambridge University Press). In 2005 he received the Michael Hunt Award from the Royal Meteorological Society for his work in popularizing meteorology.

Customer Reviews

The next step
After reading some other text introducing the general topic of climate change, the next step should be this book. Burroughs does an excellent job of introducing the intermediate level to the concerned citizen. It is an unbiased account of the state of knowledge and covers a broad spectrum of climate change from statistical interpretation to continental drift. This is not a book for people that want to confirm alarmist or denialist positions, but a methodical (sometimes dry) walkthrough of the topic of climate change that require at least fundamental knowledge of natural science. Be prepared to do your homework though.

A useful introduction to a controversial and complex topic
Many professional scientists need to rapidly access key information on specific aspects of a new domain of science they are vaguely familiar with. For me climate change falls in this category. I came across some very positive comments on this book and decided to make it my first introduction to the topic. I was particularly interested in measurements of climate change and broad descriptions of associated mathematics to guide me on planning the first steps on some work in that domain. I found chapters 4 and 5 particularly useful for that purpose. They provide appropriate qualitative descriptions of what I may need to look for in scientific papers to get me started on the development of some local empirical models. I found general discussions on the ENSO and other climatologic measurements of interactions between oceans and atmosphere pitched just at the right level. I will have no hesitation to recommend this text.

Well worth the (small) effort
There are parts of this book that make tough going for those of us whose career in the hard sciences ended with AP Chem II in high school, but give yourself time, read it over, and you'll get a handle on it. This is a good book for people who want to understand the basic sciences of weather and climate.