Understanding Climate Change: Science, Policy, and Practice
© 2014
Conversations about climate change are filled with challenges involving complex data, deeply held values, and political issues. Understanding Climate Change provides readers with a concise, accessible, and holistic picture of the climate change problem, including both the scientific and human dimensions.
Understanding Climate Change examines climate change as both a scientific and a public policy issue. Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris explain the basics of the climate system, climate models and prediction, and human and biophysical impacts, as well as strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing adaptability, and enabling climate change governance. The authors examine the connections between climate change and other pressing issues, such as human health, poverty, and other environmental problems, and they explore the ways that sustainable responses to climate change can simultaneously address those issues.
An effective and integrated introduction to an urgent and controversial issue, Understanding Climate Change contains the tools needed for students, instructors, and decision-makers to become constructive participants in the human response to climate change.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 328 pages
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.9in x 9.0in
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Reviews
Perhaps the most accessible book yet to be written on climate change: If you decide to read only one book about climate change, Understanding Climate Change is the one you should choose.
Jason MacLean
Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal‘This book is an excellent overview of the scientific and human dimensions of anthropogenic climate change… The main contribution is the seamless integration between the physical science and the social science… Highly recommended.’
J. Schoof
Choice Magazine vol 52:07:2015“This book seeks to move beyond the fundamentals and introduces the reader to the economic, political, and social dynamics of climate change. Each chapter begins with “Main Points”, or guided questions, which is ideal for guided research in schools or undergraduate classes.”
Pat M. Couts, American Association of School Librarians
University Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools 2015, Twenty Fifth Edition‘This book would be a good book for a climate change course at the undergraduate or beginning graduate level. It is also a good book for those generally interested in climate change science and policy.’
Richard Smardon
Journal of Environmental Studies & Sciences vol 5:2015
“Bridging social and natural science, Understanding Climate Change is a very accessible and well developed explanation of climate change. Students without scientific backgrounds will find the approach refreshing and appealing, yet those with natural science training will still find it engaging and interesting.”
Len Broberg, Director, Environmental Studies Program, University of Montana
“Written in an accessible style that will engage the reader, Understanding Climate Change is a well-balanced, comprehensive review of climate science and politics. The field has been crying out for such a resource.”
Aled Jones, Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University
“Understanding Climate Change is a well-written text, with strong and substantive content. Undergraduates will find its analogies and metaphors catchy and effective for learning and retention.”
Max Boykoff, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado-Boulder -
Author Information
Sarah L. Burch is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo.
Sara E. Harris is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. -
Table of contents
1. Climate Change in the Public Sphere
1.1. Communicating about climate change
1.2. The state of the science
1.3. Responding to climate change: mitigation and adaptation
1.4. The state of the policy
1.4.1. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol
1.4.2. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio, and Rio +20)
1.4.3. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1.5. The scale of the challenge: accelerating action on climate change
1.6. Roadmap to the book
2. Basic System Dynamics
2.1. What’s a system?
2.1.1. System parts and interactions
2.1.2. Stocks and flows
2.1.3. Feedbacks
2.1.4. Lags
2.1.5. Function or purpose2.2. Earth’s Climate System: The parts and interconnections
2.2.1. Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Geosphere, and Anthroposphere
2.2.2. The Ins and Out of Earth’s Energy Budget3. Climate controls: Energy from the Sun
3.1. Incoming Solar Radiation
3.1.1. Blackbody radiation: the Sun versus Earth
3.1.2. Our place in space: the Goldilocks planet3.2. Natural Variability
3.2.1. 4.5 billion years of solar energy
3.2.2. Orbital controls: baseline variability in the past million years
3.2.3. Sunspots: how big a deal?3.3. Mitigation strategies and policy tools
4. Climate Controls: Earth’s Reflectivity
4.1. Natural Variability
4.1.1. At Earth’s surface: Ice, water, and vegetation
4.1.2. In the atmosphere: Aerosols and clouds4.2. Anthropogenic Variability
4.2.1. Land-use changes
4.2.2. Anthropogenic Aerosols4.3. Mitigation strategies and policy tools
5. Climate Controls: The Greenhouse effect
5.1. How does the greenhouse effect work?
5.1.1. Characteristics of a good greenhouse gas
5.1.2. Energy flows in a greenhouse world5.2. The unperturbed carbon cycle and natural greenhouse variability
5.2.1. Carbon stocks and flows
5.2.2. Timescales of natural greenhouse variability
5.2.3. Feedbacks involving the greenhouse effect5.3. Anthropogenic interference
5.3.1. Perturbed stocks, flows, and chemical fingerprints
5.3.2. Cumulative carbon emissions: a budget6. The Core of Climate Change Mitigation: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Transforming the Energy System
6.1. Introduction to reducing greenhouse gas emissions
6.2. The Global Energy System
6.3. Mitigation Strategies
6.3.1. Demand-side mitigation: energy efficiency and conservation
6.3.2. Supply-side mitigation
6.3.3. Carbon capture and storage6.4. Fostering accelerated and transformative mitigation
7. Climate Models
7.1. Climate Model Basics
7.1.1. Physical Principles
7.1.2. The Role of Observations
7.1.3. Time and Space
7.1.4. Parameterization
7.1.5. Testing climate models7.2. Types of climate models
7.2.1. Energy Balance Models
7.2.2. Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity
7.2.3. General Circulation Models
7.2.4. Regional Climate Models
7.2.5. Integrated Assessment Models7.3. Certainties and Uncertainties
8. Future Climate: Emissions, climate, and what we do about it
8.1. Emissions scenarios
SRES scenario ‘families’ and storylines 8.1.1.
Post-SRES and Representative Concentration Pathways 8.1.2.8.2. Global Climate in 2100
Temperature, precipitation, sea level rise, and extreme events 8.2.1.
Uncertainty 8.2.2.8.3. Regional forecasting
8.4. Backcasting
8.5. Scale of the challenge: Transforming emissions pathways
9. Climate Change Impacts on Natural Systems
9.1. Observed Impacts
Impacts on Land 9.1.1.
Impacts in the Oceans 9.1.2.9.2. Adaptation in Natural Systems
9.3. Policy Tools and Progress
International tools 9.3.1.
National and sub-national tools 9.3.2.9.4. Conclusions
10. Climate Change Impacts on Human Systems
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Key concepts in climate change impacts and adaptation
10.3. Observed and Projected Impacts
10.3.1. Climate change impacts on food and water
10.3.2. Climate change impacts on cities and infrastructure
10.3.3. Equity implications: Health, culture, and global distribution of wealth10.4. Adaptation in human systems
10.5. Policy Tools and Progress
10.5.1. Policy tools for adaptation
10.5.2. International and national adaptation
10.5.3. Sub-national adaptation
10.5.4. Social movements and human behavior change: the root of the adaptation conundrum11. The Frontier: Innovative Action on Climate Change
11.1. Integrating Adaptation and Mitigation: Pursuing Sustainability
11.2. What Road will we choose? The ethics of geoengineering
11.3. Transformative change: reorienting development paths to yield a sustainable future
11.4. Conclusions and future directions
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Prizes
Outstanding Rated Title awarded by the University Press Books Committee - Winner in 2015 -
Subjects and Courses
