Edmond A. Mathez is curator emeritus in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History. A leading expositor of earth systems science, he co-curated the museum’s Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, the 2008 exhibit Climate Change: The Threat to Life and a New Energy Future, and the 2014 exhibit Nature’s Fury: The Science of Natural Disasters.Jason E. Smerdon is a Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, an Earth Institute faculty member, and the co-director of the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development, all at Columbia University. He is a leading researcher on climate variability and change over the last 2,000 years.

This text should have great appeal for teaching an introductory undergraduate course on climate change science as well as a broad survey for graduate students. The book is well written with concepts adequately explained. Mathez and Smerdon have done a great job at hitting many of the very important concepts for understanding past, present, and future climate change as well as what we can and should do about it. I particularly liked the “back of the envelope” sections that let students confront some quantitative thinking without getting bogged down in mathematical details. The many illustrations and beautiful photos should make the book appealing to students as well as the general public.

• PrefaceProloguePart I. The Climate System1. The Atmosphere2. The World Ocean3. Ocean–Atmosphere Interactions4. The Carbon Cycle and How It Influences Climate Part II. Climate Change and Its Drivers5. The Concept of Radiation Balance, a Scientific Framework for Thinking About Climate Change6. Radiative Forcing, Feedbacks, and Some Other Characteristics of the Climate System7. Learning from the Climate of the Distant PastPart III. Consequences of Climate Change8. The Climate of the Recent Past and Impacts on Human History9. Observing the Change10. Greenland, Antarctica, and Sea-Level RisePart IV. The Future11. Climate Models and the Future12. Climate Change Risk in an Unknowable Future13. Energy and the FutureEpilogueNotesGlossary BibliographyIndex

Edmond A. Mathez is curator emeritus in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History. A leading expositor of earth systems science, he co-curated the museum’s Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, the 2008 exhibit Climate Change: The Threat to Life and a New Energy Future, and the 2014 exhibit Nature’s Fury: The Science of Natural Disasters.Jason E. Smerdon is a Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, an Earth Institute faculty member, and the co-director of the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development, all at Columbia University. He is a leading researcher on climate variability and change over the last 2,000 years.

This text should have great appeal for teaching an introductory undergraduate course on climate change science as well as a broad survey for graduate students. The book is well written with concepts adequately explained. Mathez and Smerdon have done a great job at hitting many of the very important concepts for understanding past, present, and future climate change as well as what we can and should do about it. I particularly liked the “back of the envelope” sections that let students confront some quantitative thinking without getting bogged down in mathematical details. The many illustrations and beautiful photos should make the book appealing to students as well as the general public.

• PrefaceProloguePart I. The Climate System1. The Atmosphere2. The World Ocean3. Ocean–Atmosphere Interactions4. The Carbon Cycle and How It Influences Climate Part II. Climate Change and Its Drivers5. The Concept of Radiation Balance, a Scientific Framework for Thinking About Climate Change6. Radiative Forcing, Feedbacks, and Some Other Characteristics of the Climate System7. Learning from the Climate of the Distant PastPart III. Consequences of Climate Change8. The Climate of the Recent Past and Impacts on Human History9. Observing the Change10. Greenland, Antarctica, and Sea-Level RisePart IV. The Future11. Climate Models and the Future12. Climate Change Risk in an Unknowable Future13. Energy and the FutureEpilogueNotesGlossary BibliographyIndex