In recent years, efforts to integrate solid earth geophysical studies and climate studies have progressed slowly, but this volume responds to the deficiency with an in-depth examination of climate modeling. Written by eminent figures from both disciplines, it focuses on the role of tectonic boundary conditions for paleoclimate reconstruction at the same time it presents background material on the impact of tectonic changes on climate and the uncertainties in tectonic boundary conditions.

The Climate Change 2007 volumes of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provide the most comprehensive and balanced assessment of climate change available. This IPCC Working Group I report brings us completely up-to-date on the full range of scientific aspects of climate change. Written by the world's leading experts, the IPCC volumes will again prove to be invaluable for researchers, students, and policymakers, and will form the standard reference works for policy decisions for government and industry worldwide.

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Special Publications Series. Tectonic, Climatic, and Cryospheric Evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula presents the analysis of data collected during the SHALDRIL program, which sampled the most complete Cenozoic stratigraphic section in the Antarctic Peninsula. The stratigraphic intervals sampled fill major gaps in the existing stratigraphic record in the region, which is believed to have been the last place in Antarctica to become fully glaciated and, as such, the last refugium for plants and animals living on the continent. Providing previously unpublished results from studies aimed at improving our understanding of the changes in climate, glacial setting, and fauna and flora that took place over the past 30 million years, the volume highlights include discussions of marine seismic and drill core records documenting the initial growth and expansion of an ice sheet across the northernmost Antarctic Peninsula continental shelf in the northwestern Weddell Sea. The book features: Detailed vegetation and phytoplankton evolution from greenhouse through icehouse conditions in Antarctica's last refugium Sand grain texture and micromorphology indicating ice sheet control of weathering style Exhumational history around the Drake Passage margins from thermochronology and sediment provenance Comprehensive review of the opening of the ocean passageway between Antarctica and South America and the associated regional tectonics. Tectonic, Climatic, and Cryospheric Evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula will be of interest to geologists, climatologists, and glaciologists interested in climate and cryosphere evolution and those factors that regulate it.

The geologic record contains evidence of greenhouse climates in the earth's past, and by studying these past conditions, we can gain greater understanding of the forcing mechanisms and feedbacks that influence today's climate. Leading experts in paleoclimatology combine in one integrated volume new and state-of-the-art paleontological, geological, and theoretical studies to assess intervals of global warmth. The book reviews what is known about the causes and consequences of globally warm climates, demonstrates current directions of research on warm climates, and outlines the central problems that remain unresolved. The chapters present new research on a number of different warm climate intervals from the early Paleozoic to the early Cenozoic. The book will be of great interest to researchers in paleoclimatology, and it will also be useful as a supplementary text on advanced undergraduate or graduate level courses in paleoclimatology and earth science.

A significant advance in climatological scholarship, Tectonic Uplift and Climate Change is a multidisciplinary effort to summarize the current status of a new theory steadily gaining acceptance in geoscience circles: that long-term cooling and glaciation are controlled by plateau and mountain uplift. Researchers in many diverse fields, from geology to paleobotany, present data that substantiate this hypothesis. The volume covers most of the key, dramatic transformations of the Earth's surface.

This book is an unorthodox ground-breaking scientific study on natural climate change and its contribution to ongoing multi-centennial global warming. The book critically reviews the effect of the following on climate: - Milankovitch cycles - abrupt glacial (Dansgaard-Oeschger) events - Holocene climate variability - the 1500-year cycle - solar activity - volcanic eruptions - greenhouse gases - energy transport Applying the scientific method to available evidence reveals that some of these phenomena are profoundly misunderstood by most researchers. Milankovitch cycles are tied to orbital obliquity, not to orbital precessional summer insolation; glacial megatides might have triggered abrupt Dansgaard-Oeschger events; and tides are likely responsible for the related 1500-year climate cycle. Climate change affects volcanic eruptions more than the opposite; and secular variations in solar activity are more important to climate change during the Holocene than greenhouse gases. In this book, we see how important natural climate change has been on human societies of the past. It also produces new climate projections for the 21st century and when the next glaciation could happen. What emerges from this study of natural climate change is a central theme: Variations in the transport of energy from the tropics to the poles have been neglected as a cause of climate change, and solar activity variations affect climate by modulating this transport. The author tells us: –Transporting more energy from a greenhouse gas-rich region, the tropics, to a greenhouse gas-poor region, the poles, increases the amount of energy lost at the top of the atmosphere. The effect resembles a reduction in the greenhouse gas content.– The book presents the Winter-Gatekeeper Hypothesis on how variations in solar activity regulate Earth's energy transport and in so doing affect atmospheric circulation, the rotation of the planet, and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. This book is oriented toward students and academics in the climate sciences and climate anthropology and should also appeal to readers interested in the science of natural climate change. The repercussions of Climate of the Past, Present and Future are far reaching. By uncovering a strong natural climate change component, it provides a novel view of anthropogenic climate change, fossil energy use, and our future climate; a view quite different from the IPCC's gloomy projections.