Description:

Global climate change is suddenly a regular topic in the evening news, thanks partly to the success of Al Gore's film, "An Inconvienent Truth" and partly because of the latest round of summary reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, both of which occurred while this book was being written. Behind this news is a rising tide of new scientific information about global warming and its effects derived from ice cores in polar regions, sediment cores elsewhere, global climate computer models, and a virtual wave of ecological studies. This book is a series of summaries of some 200 of the most important scientific papers published on these subjects in 2006 and 2007. Our intent is to capture the full scientific significance of this literature in brief journalistic summaries accessable to the lay reader. They can be read in any order, and the format invites browsing for top-ics of particular current interest.