Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the modern world. The chemistry of the air within the framework of the climate system forms the main focus of this monograph. This problem-based approach to presenting global atmospheric processes begins with the chemical evolution of the climate system in order to evaluate the effects of changing air composition as well as possibilities for interference within these processes. Chemical interactions of the atmosphere with the biosphere and hydrosphere are treated in the sense of a multi-phase chemistry. From the perspective of a "chemical climatology" the book offers an approach to solving the problem of climate change through chemistry.

This is the first work to examine critically both the scientific work and the man behind it, and as well as providing the historian of science with a comprehensive account of the life and work of a major nineteenth-century scientist, the book will also be of value to the social and economic historian.