T. M. L. Wigley - Böcker

Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is imperative to stabilizing our future climate. Our ability to reduce these emissions combined with an understanding of how much fossil-fuel-derived CO2 the oceans and plants can absorb is central to mitigating climate change. In The Carbon Cycle, leading scientists examine how atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have changed in the past and how this may affect the concentrations in the future. They look at the carbon budget and the 'missing sink' for carbon dioxide. They offer approaches to modeling the carbon cycle, providing mathematical tools for predicting future levels of carbon dioxide. This comprehensive text incorporates findings from the recent IPCC reports. New insights, and a convergence of ideas and views across several disciplines make this book an important contribution to the global change literature. It will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers working in the field.

Through the writings of the world's leading experts in their fields, this book, first published in 1993, presents the general state of knowledge regarding the effects of climatic change on sea level and their associated impacts. The evidence for past sea level changes and their possible climatic causes on both geological and secular time-scales are reviewed, as are methods for improving observations of sea level changes. These observations examine greenhouse gas concentrations as well as oceanic thermal expansion on Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets. Projections of global mean temperature and sea level rise over the next century are made, emphasising the uncertainties involved. A particular area of study is the low-lying coastal regions and the possible effects of severe tropical storms and storm surges. Case studies of the Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mississippi deltas, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and the Norfolk coast of the UK, among others document the regional and local scale where issues relating to sea level, physical environment and socio-economic effects are paramount.

This highly successful book is a collection of twenty papers, specially written by research workers in the many relevant disciplines. First published in 1985, it was the first major survey of both the methodology of climatic reconstruction and the problem of climate/history interactions, and embodies the results of fruitful co-operation between historians, archaeologists and scientists. It discusses: the climatic information obtainable from the study of chemical isotopes, glaciers, pollen remains, tree rings, archaeological materials and documentary sources; the theoretical and methodological problems involved in assessing the impact of climate and climatic change on past societies; and provides a series of case studies arguing for or against the importance of climatic factors in human affairs in specific economic, social and cultural contexts.