Earth’s Climate Evolution

To understand climate change today, we need to know how the Earth'sclimate has changed over the past 450 million years. This will involvcontributions from a wide range of sciences. In Earth's Climate Evolution,Colin Summerhayes analyses reports and records of past climatchange dating back to the late 18th century in order to uncover keypatterns in the climate system. The book will transform debate andset the agenda for the next generation of thought about futureclimate change. Institute Also availableas an e-bookEarth's Climate Evolution takes a unique approach to the subjectproviding a description of the greenhouse and icehouse worlds of the450 million years since land plants first emerged (and ignoring majorearlier glaciations like that of Snowball Earth, which occurred around600 million years ago, in a world free of land plants). It describes theevolution orthinking in palaeoclimatology, introducing the maiplayers in the field and describing how their ideas were received and,in many cases, subsequently modified. It records arguments anddiscussions about the merits of different ideas that occurred along theway. It also includes several observations from the author's personalinvolvement in palaeoclimatological andpalaeoceanographic studies,and from his experience of working alongside several of the majorplayers in these fields in recent years. This book will be an invaluable reference for both undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in related fields and will be of interest to historians of science and/or geology, climatology and oceanography. It should also be of interest to the wider scientific and engineering community, high school science students, policy makers, and environmental NGOs