Princeton Primers in Climate

Shawn J. Marshall is the Canada Research Chair in Climate Change at the University of Calgary. The cryosphere encompasses the Earth's snow and ice masses. It is a critical part of our planet's climate system, one that is especially at risk from climate change and global warming. The Cryosphere provides an essential introduction to the subject, written by one of the world's leading experts in Earth-system science. In this primer, glaciologist Shawn Marshall introduces readers to the cryosphere and the broader role it plays in our global climate system. After giving a concise overview, he fully explains each component of the cryosphere and how it works--seasonal snow, permafrost, river and lake ice, sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, and ice shelves. Marshall describes how snow and ice interact with our atmosphere and oceans and how they influence climate, sea level, and ocean circulation. He looks at the cryosphere's role in past ice ages and considers the changing cryosphere's future impact on our landscape, oceans, and climate. Accessible and authoritative, this primer also features a glossary of key terms, suggestions for further reading, explanations of equations, and a discussion of open research questions in the field. "In this work, part of the Princeton Primers in Climate series, glaciologist Marshall examines the nature of ice and snow (the cryosphere) in all its various forms. . . . This book is accessible to interested readers with a background in physics; it could also serve as a textbook in a senior undergraduate or graduate-level course." "[E]vidence of the author's expertise shines through. . . . The book ends with a succinct and thoughtful summary of cryospheric changes in recent history."---R.J. Galley, Arctic "I recommend this book for anyone seeking a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the physical processes governing the primary components of the global cryosphere. This text offers more than enough information for a new student in the field, and provides a great jumping-off point for those seeking higher understanding of a particular area of cryospheric science."---Gina R. Henderson, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society "[T]he quality of the book's content is beyond question. In its 288 pages The Cryosphere manages to provide an overview of all aspects of the Earth's cryosphere while, at the same time, leaving the reader feeling that he or she has gained significant technical insight into many of its key characteristic processes."---B. Hubbard, Antarctic Science "Distinguished glaciologist Shawn Marshall leads a lucid tour through the essentials of ice in the environment, with more than enough information to satisfy the casual student, and additional pointers to steer the serious scientist."-Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University "Marshall presents a comprehensive, accessible, and authoritative treatment of the cryosphere, and makes excellent use of field and model examples to illustrate key points. New metaphors and descriptions are offered for familiar topics that bring with them new insight and utility. I enjoyed reading this book."-Robert Bindschadler, emeritus scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center This is one of the best, most up-to-date books about the state of the cryosphere and an excellent read."-Eric Rignot, University of California, Irvine

Geoffrey K. Vallis is professor and senior scientist in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University. He is the author of the standard graduate text Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics. The oceans exert a vital moderating influence on the Earth's climate system. They provide inertia to the global climate, essentially acting as the pacemaker of climate variability and change, and they provide heat to high latitudes, keeping them habitable. Climate and the Oceans offers a short, self-contained introduction to the subject. This illustrated primer begins by briefly describing the world's climate system and ocean circulation and goes on to explain the important ways that the oceans influence climate. Topics covered include the oceans' effects on the seasons, heat transport between equator and pole, climate variability, and global warming. The book also features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and easy-to-follow mathematical treatments. Climate and the Oceans is the first place to turn to get the essential facts about this crucial aspect of the Earth's climate system. Ideal for students and nonspecialists alike, this primer offers the most concise and up-to-date overview of the subject available. • The best primer on the oceans and climate • Succinct and self-contained • Accessible to students and nonspecialists • Serves as a bridge to more advanced material "This easy-to-read illustrated book, filled with both data and accessible mathematical equations demonstrating the impact of the oceans on the Earth's climate, offers practitioners and stakeholders' state-of-the-art scientific analysis of how the oceans and climate interact that is both user friendly to the non-expert yet scientifically rigorous enough as bridge material for graduate students as they grapple with the compelling field of climate science and oceanography. . . . These books at Princeton Primers in Climate are a superb resource to find meticulous, detailed, and clearly presented facts on climate change science."---Gabriel Thoumi, MongaBay.com "This is an excellent primer on the physical processes that control interactions within and between the atmosphere and ocean. . . . It is a quick read that would be appropriate for scientists looking for information on the salient points of ocean-atmosphere interactions and climate. It would also serve as a useful complementary resource for an introductory-level course in oceanography." "I absolutely recommend this book. Those expecting a primer on oceans and climate will be rewarded with much more than a book that teaches the basics of a subject. I have taught about the ocean for more than 20 years and I still found plenty of insights in this text that will enhance my own teaching of undergraduate and graduate students."---Susan Lozier, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society "In this crystal-clear little book, Geoffrey Vallis masterfully explains the basics of physical oceanography and the role of the oceans in the climate system. He writes for those conversant with some university-level mathematics and physics, but whose knowledge of the oceans and climate is limited. The book moves smoothly from fundamental principles to topics of current research interest, including natural climate variability, such as El Niño, and the daunting challenge of man-made climate change, or global warming."-Richard Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography "Readers interested in understanding how the ocean influences climate have had to choose between journalistic, grossly oversimplified accounts and the very technical professional literature. Geoffrey Vallis has now successfully filled that gap with a clear explanation of the ways in which the ocean is both influenced by and influences global climate."-Carl Wunsch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Climate and the Oceans is an accessi

David Schimel is a senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Previously, he was CEO of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and founding codirector of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. In 2007, he was a corecipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first report on the global carbon cycle. How does life on our planet respond to--and shape--climate? This question has never been more urgent than it is today, when humans are faced with the daunting task of guiding adaptation to an inexorably changing climate. This concise, accessible, and authoritative book provides an unmatched introduction to the most reliable current knowledge about the complex relationship between living things and climate. Using an Earth System framework, David Schimel describes how organisms, communities of organisms, and the planetary biosphere itself react to and influence environmental change. While much about the biosphere and its interactions with the rest of the Earth System remains a mystery, this book explains what is known about how physical and chemical climate affect organisms, how those physical changes influence how organisms function as individuals and in communities of organisms, and ultimately how climate-triggered ecosystem changes feed back to the physical and chemical parts of the Earth System. An essential introduction, Climate and Ecosystems shows how Earth's living systems profoundly shape the physical world. "Schimel has been studying the climate-ecosystem interface for more than 30 years, and the book's level of authority reflects his expertise. Nonetheless, it is quite personable in tone and highly accessible to undergraduate students. It seems to cover the territory quite thoroughly, beginning with a very brief introduction to climate generally." "The author does an admirable job of presenting a highly complex field of study in an extraordinarily accessible manner. . . . [It] will find immediate application in my own undergraduate course on climate change ecology. . . . It should be accessible to upper-level undergraduate students, and most certainly will be to beginning graduate students. As I write this, I am already mentally revising the syllabus for my senior-level course to incorporate much of the material from this book, and I intend to recommend it wholeheartedly to colleagues."---Eric Post, Quarterly Review of Biology "This accessible primer addresses important but neglected questions: How do climate variations shape life on land and in the sea? And how in turn does life influence climate? Bridging traditional disciplines, this book will make a good addition to undergraduate and introductory graduate courses in environmental and Earth System science."-Scott Doney, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution "The role of the biosphere in the Earth Climate System is of course a big topic. Rather than addressing it with a sea of equations, graphs, and references, Schimel gives an insightful description of the system's controls, connections, interactions, and feedbacks. Reading this book is like sitting around a campfire with your favorite mentor rather than sitting in a lecture hall."-Steven W. Running, University of Montana and Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group "Predicting how land and ocean ecosystems will respond to and influence future climate change is incredibly difficult. This timely book explains why in ways that acknowledge complexity while remaining accessible to the nonspecialist. Because it juxtaposes climate-ecosystem interactions in the ocean and on land, the book has something to teach everyone."-Susan Trumbore, Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry "This compelling book provides an excellent summary of the interactions between ecosystems and climate. Schimel writes in an interesting way and has a gr

Joanna D. Haigh is professor of atmospheric physics and codirector of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. Peter Cargill is professor emeritus of physics at Imperial College London and honorary professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St. Andrews. The Earth's climate system depends entirely on the Sun for its energy. Solar radiation warms the atmosphere and is fundamental to atmospheric composition, while the distribution of solar heating across the planet produces global wind patterns and contributes to the formation of clouds, storms, and rainfall. The Sun's Influence on Climate provides an unparalleled introduction to this vitally important relationship. This accessible primer covers the basic properties of the Earth's climate system, the structure and behavior of the Sun, and the absorption of solar radiation in the atmosphere. It explains how solar activity varies and how these variations affect the Earth's environment, from long-term paleoclimate effects to century timescales in the context of human-induced climate change, and from signals of the 11-year sunspot cycle to the impacts of solar emissions on space weather in our planet's upper atmosphere. Written by two of the leading authorities on the subject, The Sun's Influence on Climate is an essential primer for students and nonspecialists alike. "Increasing understanding of how the sun affects climate will deepen human understanding of future trajectories of climate change." "Exceptional. No other book can compete with this one in providing students with a comprehensive, unified treatment of the subject."-Peter Pilewskie, University of Colorado Boulder "This succinct volume will be invaluable to scientists and general readers who want to learn more about the Sun and its effects on our climate system. The Sun's Influence on Climate is an excellent book."-Gerald R. North, Texas A&M University "The Sun's Influence on Climate provides a quick, nontechnical introduction to the topic. I know of no comparable book covering our current state of knowledge about solar-climate connections."-Hauke Schmidt, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

David Randall is professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. An essential primer on atmospheric processes and their important role in the climate system The atmosphere is critical to climate change. It can amplify shifts in the climate system, and also mitigate them. This primer offers a short, reader-friendly introduction to these atmospheric processes and how they work, written by a leading expert on the subject. Giving readers an overview of key atmospheric processes, David Randall looks at how our climate system receives energy from the sun and sheds it by emitting infrared radiation back into space. The atmosphere regulates these radiative energy flows and transports energy through weather systems such as thunderstorms, monsoons, hurricanes, and winter storms. Randall explains how these processes work, and also how precipitation, cloud formation, and other phase changes of water strongly influence weather and climate. He discusses how atmospheric feedbacks affect climate change, how the large-scale atmospheric circulation works, how predicting the weather and the climate are fundamentally different challenges, and much more. This is the ideal introduction for students and nonspecialists. No prior experience in atmospheric science is needed, only basic college physics. Authoritative and concise, Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and easy-to-follow explanations of a few key equations. This accessible primer is the essential introduction to atmospheric processes and the vital role they play in our climate system. "Readers ready for a book-length treatment of [the role of clouds in climate] may find the right level of detail in Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate, a new book by Dr. Randall."---Justin Gillis, NYTimes.com's Green blog "In four chapters and a mere 139 pages, Randall provides readers with an impressively thorough conceptual understanding of the atmosphere's central role in climate. . . . His passion consistently shines through."---Spencer Hill, Science "This book, part of the Princeton Primers in Climate series, is a very lucid and enjoyable introduction to weather and climate. Randall provides basic technical details, usually in the appendixes, but he devotes considerable effort to making the nine-chapter text accessible to a wide audience by including intuitive explanations for the concepts presented. . . . Suitable for academic students and interested professionals who wish to have a basic understanding of the atmosphere." "[T]his primer does exactly what it sets out to do-provide a concise but rigorous introduction to a complex subject that affects us all on all scales."---John Brittan, Leading Edge "In this book, one of the leaders of the field condenses a huge amount of climate theory into a very small space. This is done in an informal narrative style with a minimum of equations and other hard technical details, but with a serious dedication to constructing a coherent and logical storyline without glossing over essentials. I have not seen another book like this."-Adam Sobel, Columbia University "Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate achieves a good balance between intuitive physical reasoning and more formal arguments where necessary. This lucid book gives a tour of the most important atmospheric processes determining climate."-Tapio Schneider, California Institute of Technology

"Second Place in the 2012 Book Series in the Professional Scholarly Series category, New York Book Show" David Archer is professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate and Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, and the coauthor of The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change. A must-have introduction to this fundamental driver of the climate system The Global Carbon Cycle is a short introduction to this essential geochemical driver of the Earth's climate system, written by one of the world's leading climate-science experts. In this one-of-a-kind primer, David Archer engages readers in clear and simple terms about the many ways the global carbon cycle is woven into our climate system. He begins with a concise overview of the subject, and then looks at the carbon cycle on three different time scales, describing how the cycle interacts with climate in very distinct ways in each. On million-year time scales, feedbacks in the carbon cycle stabilize Earth's climate and oxygen concentrations. Archer explains how on hundred-thousand-year glacial/interglacial time scales, the carbon cycle in the ocean amplifies climate change, and how, on the human time scale of decades, the carbon cycle has been dampening climate change by absorbing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the oceans and land biosphere. A central question of the book is whether the carbon cycle could once again act to amplify climate change in centuries to come, for example through melting permafrost peatlands and methane hydrates. The Global Carbon Cycle features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and explanations of equations, as well as a forward-looking discussion of open questions about the global carbon cycle. "A detailed, but readable look at the science behind the way the Earth reacts to carbon and other factors that relate to global climate. [Archer] discusses changes in the Earth's temperature throughout history and the reasons behind. Such factors as the gradual warming of the sun and changes in the Earth's orbit are examined. Without some understanding of the science that goes beyond parroting what we hear in the form of sound bites on the evening news, we cannot have an informed discussion."---Brad Sylvester, Yahoo News "[Archer] clearly presents the treatments of changes in the Earth's orbital trajectory, anthropogenic increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, ocean pH swings, and temperature shifts. Archer's use of three different timescales to clarify Earth's historical climate cycles illustrates his mastery of thermodynamics and chemical equilibria." "If you want to understand why scientists can't seem to find consensus on climate change, then this book, through its honest acknowledgement of how much we don't know and what we can't completely predict, will help."---Pat Thomas, Geographical "An easily readable format, this lightweight book is an excellent companion to those who need a quick on-the-go reference or for those who need a compendium for their office or lab. . . . The Global Carbon Cycle is an authoritative book with numerous examples explaining scientific phenomena associated the global carbon cycle. The Global Carbon Cycle book also contains a glossary of terms along with an excellent bibliography for further reading." "Archer's book is a must read for specialists and graduate students in geochemistry, palaeoclimatology, and modem climate change. This is an essential source of fresh information on carbon cycling on the Earth."---Dmitry A. Ruban, Palaeontologie allgemein "Fossil-fuel carbon is our dangerous treasure. David Archer brilliantly and lucidly provides the essential background on Earth's carbon cycle that we need to make wise decisions about future use."-Richard B. Alley, Pennsylvania State University "David Archer is one of the world's leading experts advancing our understandi

Andrew P. Ingersoll, the Earle C. Anthony Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology, is an expert on the weather and climate of Earth and the other planets. This concise, sophisticated introduction to planetary climates explains the global physical and chemical processes that determine climate on any planet or major planetary satellite--from Mercury to Neptune and even large moons such as Saturn's Titan. Although the climates of other worlds are extremely diverse, the chemical and physical processes that shape their dynamics are the same. As this book makes clear, the better we can understand how various planetary climates formed and evolved, the better we can understand Earth's climate history and future. "Prof Andrew Ingersoll has made many important contributions to planetary science through his career, and in Planetary Climates he wields his immense expertise to really get across the weirdness of weather systems on other worlds."---Lewis Dartnell, BBC Sky at Night "[This] is an ideal introduction for science students and nonspecialist scientists, as well as general readers with a scientific background." "Like all works in the excellent 'Princeton Primers in Climate' series, this book presents content in the main body in a nontechnical manner, with little mathematical detail, but then includes detailed technical/mathematical information in sidebars and boxes so that various levels of more advanced discussion can be individually tailored to a particular group of students." "In forty years of teaching similar material to undergraduates, I have not seen a better book. The subject is the science that underlies climate. Each chapter focuses in depth on one or two important concepts. Mathematics is avoided when not needed. But Ingersoll is not compromising. He gives full explanations of even difficult concepts, such as vorticity. There is no political material here, just carefully presented science. This is the book to assign prior to entering policy debates in an undergraduate course."-Peter J. Gierasch, Cornell University "This clear and engaging book presents a sweeping tour of our solar system's diverse planetary atmospheres, providing a rich foundation on their structure, composition, circulation, climate, and long-term evolution. Explaining current knowledge, physical and chemical mechanisms, and unanswered questions, the book brings the reader to the cutting edge of the field. Highly recommended."-Adam Showman, University of Arizona