GLY 3074- Oceans and Global Climate Change

Spring 2009

Books on Reserve at Marston Library

 

Archer, David, Global Warming- Understanding the Forecast (on order?)

A good, up-to-date summary of global warming issues: the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle, and predictions.  It covers much of the material in the last third of the course.

 

Bigg, Grant R., The Oceans and Climate (QC981.8.C5B54)

            Focuses on the physical, biological, chemical processes that affect the ocean-atmosphere system over a wide range of timescales.  It is written by a physicists and tends to be somewhat dense, but it contains a lot of good information.

 

Cronin, Thomas M., Principles of Paleoclimatology

            The first part of this book focuses on the principles of paleoclimatology- the climate system and the proxies used to study the system in the past.  The second part looks at climate change over a range of timescales from annual to 10,000’s of years.  It includes sections on millennial scale variations, decadal oscillations, and ENSO events.  The last section looks at sea level variations through time and the record of climate change preserved in ice cores.

 

Gore, Al, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), QC981.8.G56 G67 2006

            This book includes all of the figures and much of the text from the recently released movie with the same title.  It presents a very accessible version of much of the material we will discuss from late February into March.

 

Houghton, John, Global Warming (3rd edition, 2003)

Includes a useful discussion of the earth’s climate system and energy balance, as well as detailed information about the causes and effects of global warming.

 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report 2007 (Available online at http://www.ipcc.ch/)

Climate Change 1992 and 1994 (QC981.8.C51571 and QC981.8.C5.C5125)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the  WMO (World Meteorological Organization) and UNEP (United Nations Environmental Panel) to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation (taken from they website).   They put out a report every few years.  Each report is a scientific assessment of where the world stands on these issues at the time.  In general, the panel has generally been quite conservative about linking anthropogenic gas outputs to global warming; however, the most recent report (http://www.ipcc.ch/) states that climate is warming in response to anthropogenic changes.

 

 

Pinet, Paul, R., Invitation to Oceanography

            This is a standard introductory oceanography textbook.  As such it covers: the formation of the ocean basins, properties of seawater, atmospheric and ocean circulation, marine ecology and productivity, and ocean resources.

 

Ruddiman, William F., Earth’s Climate Past and Future (QC981 .R76 2000)

            This is a well-written textbook for a course on paleoclimatology.  It has useful information about the climate system, archives of climate data and climate change in the geologic past.

 

Schlesinger, William H., Biogeochemistry- An Analysis of Global Change (QH343.7.S35)- Good descriptions of major nutrient cycles.

 

www.nature.com/climate/index.html

A very interesting website with lots of articles on climate change- a good place to try to find a topic for your presentation.  You may need to access this on campus in order to activate the links.