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Books in Climatology

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41-50 of 61 results in All results

Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics

  • 1st Edition
  • October 12, 2007
  • David G. Anderson + 2 more
  • English
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 5 4 5 5 - 6
The Middle Holocene epoch (8,000 to 3,000 years ago) was a time of dramatic changes in the physical world and in human cultures. Across this span, climatic conditions changed rapidly, with cooling in the high to mid-latitudes and drying in the tropics. In many parts of the world, human groups became more complex, with early horticultural systems replaced by intensive agriculture and small-scale societies being replaced by larger, more hierarchial organizations. Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics explores the cause and effect relationship between climatic change and cultural transformations across the mid-Holocene (c. 4000 B.C.).

Climate, Environment, and Society in the Pacific during the Last Millennium

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 6
  • September 6, 2007
  • Patrick D. Nunn
  • English
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 4 8 2 1 - 0
The nature of global change in the Pacific Basin is poorly known compared to other parts of the world. Climate, Environment, and Society in the Pacific during the Last Millennium describes the climate changes that occurred in the Pacific during the last millennium and discusses how these changes controlled the broad evolution of human societies, typically filtered by the effects of changing sea level and storminess on food availability and interaction. Covering the entire period since AD 750 in the Pacific, this book describes the influences of climate change on environments and societies during the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, focusing on the 100-year transition between these – a period of rapid change known as the AD 1300 Event.

Late Quaternary Climate Change and Human Adaptation in Arid China

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 9
  • May 10, 2007
  • D.B. Madsen + 2 more
  • English
  • Hardback
    9 7 8 - 0 - 4 4 4 - 5 2 9 6 2 - 6
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 4 4 3 1 - 1
Due to political pressures, prior to the 1990s little was known about the nature of human foraging adaptations in the deserts, grasslands, and mountains of north western China during the last glacial period. Even less was known about the transition to agriculture that followed. Now open to foreign visitation, there is now an increasing understanding of the foraging strategies which led both to the development of millet agriculture and to the utilization of the extreme environments of the Tibetan Plateau. This text explores the transition from the foraging societies of the Late Paleolithic to the emergence of settled farming societies and the emergent pastoralism of the middle Neolithic striving to help answer the diverse and numerous questions of this critical transitional period.

Floods in an Arid Continent

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 39
  • November 29, 2006
  • Aldo Poiani
  • English
  • Hardback
    9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 3 7 3 6 3 0 - 7
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 4 6 9 1 4 - 0
Nowhere are floods more paradoxical than in the generally arid Australian continent. Floods in an Arid Continent brings together experts in meteorology, hydrology, limnology, ornithology, landscape ecology, veterinary and medical sciences, economics, anthropology and sociology to synthesize current knowledge on floods, their occurrence, and their consequences for the environment and societies in the Australian context. Floods can have either beneficial or detrimental effects on the landscape and human societies. This book fills this important gap in our study and offers a multidisciplinary approach in understanding the effects of global climate change. The editors provide complete coverage on dynamics, patterns and consequences of floods, studied from several perspectives. Although the geographic focus of the book is Australia, the synthesis that is detailed in this book will undoubtedly be useful for the understanding of floods in all other regions of the planet.

Mediterranean Climate Variability

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 4
  • August 22, 2006
  • P. Lionello + 2 more
  • English
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 4 6 0 7 9 - 6
This multi-authored book provides an updated description of climate variability in the Mediterranean basin, focusing on decadal and centennial time scales and on the results available on the impact of future emission scenarios at regional scale. The authors describs both local physical processes responsible for these variability - such as changes in the surface properties and land use- and globalprocesses - such as changes in the large scale atmospheric circulation associated to global warming, NAO, tropical monsoon and ENSO. Regional climate change issues are also addressed. Mediterranean Climate Variability aims to review the research on this region and to provide at the same time both an introduction and a reference for researchers. It covers topics typical of Climatology, Climate history, Meteorology, Oceanography, Environmental Science but the information here provided would also be useful for research in agriculture, social and economic studies. It is addressed to scientists and students interested in the Mediterranean climate and environment. Some topics have interesting connections to nearby regions: Northern Atlantic, West Africa, central and Eastern Europe. Each chapter will contain a summary meant to provide information to policy makers, researchers from other fields, and in general to a wide audience without a technical expertise on climate.

Birds and Climate Change

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 35
  • November 13, 2004
  • Anders Pape Moller + 2 more
  • English
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 4 7 1 9 2 - 1
Temperature and other climate variables are currently changing at a dramatic rate. As observations have shown, these climatic changes have serious consequences for all organisms and their ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Birds are excellent model organisms, with a very active metabolism, they are highly sensitive to environmental changes and as highly mobile creatures they are also extremely reactive. Birds and Climate Change discusses our current knowledge of observed changes and provides guidelines for studies in the years to come so we can document and understand how patterns of changing weather conditions may affect birds.

Global Biogeochemical Cycles in the Climate System

  • 1st Edition
  • July 12, 2001
  • Ernst-Detlef Schulze + 6 more
  • English
  • Hardback
    9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 6 3 1 2 6 0 - 7
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 0 7 4 0 - 8
The interactions of biogeochemical cycles influence and maintain our climate system. Land use and fossil fuel emissions are currently impacting the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur on land, in the atmosphere, and in the oceans.This edited volume brings together 27 scholarly contributions on the state of our knowledge of earth system interactions among the oceans, land, and atmosphere. A unique feature of this treatment is the focus on the paleoclimatic and paleobiotic context for investigating these complex interrelationships.

Interhemispheric Climate Linkages

  • 1st Edition
  • December 28, 2000
  • Vera Markgraf
  • English
  • Hardback
    9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 4 7 2 6 7 0 - 3
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 2 5 6 6 - 2
This book presents a novel approach in the field of global change by presenting a comprehensive analysis of interhemispheric linkages of climate, present and past, and their effects on human societies. The ultimate goal of this interhemispheric integration is to improve our understanding of causes and mechanisms of climate change to enhance our capability in predicting future changes. Given the societal interest in global change issues this book offers a new approach for the integration of global information. It will provide a reference for professional scientists, researchers and graduate students in the fields of climatology, and the earth and environmental sciences.

Modeling the Earth's Climate and its Variability

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 67
  • December 13, 1999
  • W.R. Holland + 2 more
  • English
  • Hardback
    9 7 8 - 0 - 4 4 4 - 5 0 3 3 8 - 1
Understanding and predicting the Earth's climate system, particularly climate variability and possible human-induced climate change, presents one of the most difficult and urgent challenges in science. Climate scientists worldwide have responded to that challenge over the past decade by creating a wide variety of ever more sophisticated climate models that are beginning to show considerable ability to replicate many aspects of the climate system. At the same time, to fully understand climate change, one also has to look to past climates. For this purpose five eminent scholars who span the disciplines of modeling and observation, including elements of past, present and future climate studies came together at this Les Houches school. They presented a systematic development of each of their respective subjects which provided a comprehensive overview of this vast and complex subject. These core lectures were supplemented by a set of shorter lectures and of seminars.

Light Scattering by Nonspherical Particles

  • 1st Edition
  • September 10, 1999
  • Michael I. Mishchenko + 2 more
  • English
  • Hardback
    9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 4 9 8 6 6 0 - 2
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 1 0 2 0 - 0
There is hardly a field of science or engineering that does not have some interest in light scattering by small particles. For example, this subject is important to climatology because the energy budget for the Earth's atmosphere is strongly affected by scattering of solar radiation by cloud and aerosol particles, and the whole discipline of remote sensing relies largely on analyzing the parameters of radiation scattered by aerosols, clouds, and precipitation. The scattering of light by spherical particles can be easily computed using the conventional Mie theory. However, most small solid particles encountered in natural and laboratory conditions have nonspherical shapes. Examples are soot and mineral aerosols, cirrus cloud particles, snow and frost crystals, ocean hydrosols, interplanetary and cometary dust grains, and microorganisms. It is now well known that scattering properties of nonspherical particles can differ dramatically from those of "equivalent" (e.g., equal-volume or equal-surface-area) spheres. Therefore, the ability to accurately compute or measure light scattering by nonspherical particles in order to clearly understand the effects of particle nonsphericity on light scattering is very important. The rapid improvement of computers and experimental techniques over the past 20 years and the development of efficient numerical approaches have resulted in major advances in this field which have not been systematically summarized. Because of the universal importance of electromagnetic scattering by nonspherical particles, papers on different aspects of this subject are scattered over dozens of diverse research and engineering journals. Often experts in one discipline (e.g., biology) are unaware of potentially useful results obtained in another discipline (e.g., antennas and propagation). This leads to an inefficient use of the accumulated knowledge and unnecessary redundancy in research activities. This book offers the first systematic and unified discussion of light scattering by nonspherical particles and its practical applications and represents the state-of-the-art of this important research field. Individual chapters are written by leading experts in respective areas and cover three major disciplines: theoretical and numerical techniques, laboratory measurements, and practical applications. An overview chapter provides a concise general introduction to the subject of nonspherical scattering and should be especially useful to beginners and those interested in fast practical applications. The audience for this book will include graduate students, scientists, and engineers working on specific aspects of electromagnetic scattering by small particles and its applications in remote sensing, geophysics, astrophysics, biomedical optics, and optical engineering.