Archer's Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast 2nd Edition presents the science and policy surrounding climate change at. Accompanying videos, simulations and instructional support make it easier to build a syllabus to improve and create new material on climate change. Archer's polished writing style makes the text entertaining while the improved pedagogy helps better understand key concepts, ideas and terms. This edition has been revised and reformulated with a new chapter template of short chapter introductions, study questions at the end, and critical thinking puzzlers throughout. Also, a new asset for the BCS was created that will give ideas for assignments and topics for essays and other projects. Furthermore, a number of interactive models have been built to help understand the science and systems behind the processes.
Online Models v
Preface vii
1 Humankind and Climate 1
Part I The Greenhouse Effect 7
2 Blackbody Radiation 9
3 The Layer Model 19
4 Greenhouse Gases 29
5 What Holds the Atmosphere Up? 43
6 Weather and Climate 57
7 Feedbacks 73
Part II The Carbon Cycle 87
8 Carbon on Earth 89
9 Fossil Fuels and Energy 103
10 The Perturbed Carbon Cycle 119
Part III The Forecast 133
11 The Smoking Gun 135
12 Potential Climate Impacts 153
13 Decisions, Decisions 173
Glossary 191
Index 197
David Archer is a computational ocean chemist at the University of Chicago. He is interested in the carbon cycle and its interaction with global climate, in the past and future.
Review fo the first edition:
"Rigorous but rewarding, David Archer's book takes us through the science of global warming so that we can more effectively assess where the world may be heading."
– Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford
"David Archer's book is an accessible, entertaining, but detailed account of how scientists are trying to predict future climate change. It is an excellent book and should be the first port of call for anyone wanting to delve deeper into exactly what goes into those global warming forecasts."
– Mark Maslin, University College London, author of Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction
"David Archer has provided a masterful and lucid explanation of a complex environmental problem. This is all you need to understand the issues."
– Professor Ray Bradley, University of Massachusetts
"This is a wonderful book. Between the covers of a surprisingly slim paperback, David Archer has distilled nearly everything a concerned undergraduate student could wish to know about the workings of the climate system [...] overall, this book perfectly hits its target audience."
– Keith Alverson, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, Environmental Conservation, August 2007
"[...] a tour de force of elegant explanation and didactic brilliance [...] I cannot recommend this book too highly; it is a well-written, evocative exposition of one of the most important issues of our time."
– Howard Falcon-Lang, University of Bristol, Geology Today, August 2007