The threat of global warming--the danger of melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, lost coast lines, and increasingly volatile weather--has made climate an integral aspect of one of the great hot-button issues of our time. It has certainly never been more important for all of us to understand the nature of climate than now. In this wide-ranging Very Short Introduction to climate, Mark Maslin considers all aspects of the global climate system, exploring...

"In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion - by way of unexpected twists and turns - was the story Spencer Weart told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his award-winning...

When Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano's massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Amid devastating storms, drought, and floods, communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale. On the eve of the...