E-Book Overview
This book introduces the reader to all the basic physical building blocks of climate needed to understand the present and past climate of Earth, the climates of Solar System planets, and the climates of extrasolar planets. These building blocks include thermodynamics, infrared radiative transfer, scattering, surface heat transfer and various processes governing the evolution of atmospheric composition. Nearly four hundred problems are supplied to help consolidate the reader's understanding, and to lead the reader towards original research on planetary climate. This textbook is invaluable for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students in atmospheric science, Earth and planetary science, astrobiology, and physics. It also provides a superb reference text for researchers in these subjects, and is very suitable for academic researchers trained in physics or chemistry who wish to rapidly gain enough background to participate in the excitement of the new research opportunities opening in planetary climate.
E-Book Content
9780521865562pre CUP/PRHT September 28, 2010 12:31 Page-i Principles of Planetary Climate This book introduces the reader to all the basic physical building blocks of climate needed to understand the present and past climate of Earth, the climates of Solar System planets, and the climates of the newly discovered extrasolar planets. These building blocks include thermodynamics, infrared radiative transfer, scattering, surface heat transfer and various processes governing the evolution of atmospheric composition. General phenomena such as Snowball Earth states, habitability zones, and the Runaway Greenhouse are used to illustrate the interplay of the basic building blocks of physics. The reader will also acquire a quantitative understanding of such key problems as the Faint Young Sun, the nature of Titan’s cold liquid-methane hydrological cycle, and the warm, wet Early Mars climate, in addition to phenomena related to anthropogenic global warming on Earth, Earth’s glacial–interglacial cycles, and their analogues on other planets. Exploration of simple analytical solutions is used throughout as a means to build the intuition needed to interpret the behavior of more complex phenomena requiring numerical simulation. Where numerical simulation is necessary, all necessary algorithms are developed in the text, and implemented in user-modifiable software modules supplied in the online supplement to the book. Nearly 400 problems are supplied to help consolidate the reader’s understanding, and to lead the reader towards original research on planetary climate. This textbook is invaluable for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students in atmospheric science, Earth and planetary science, astrobiology, and physics. It also provides a superb reference text for researchers in these subjects, and is very suitable for academic researchers trained in physics or chemistry who wish to rapidly gain enough background to participate in the excitement of the new research opportunities opening in planetary climate. R A Y M O N D T . P I E R R E H U M B E R T is the Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, where he has taught and undertaken research on a wide variety of Earth and planetary climate problems for over 20 years. He shared in the Nobel Peace Prize as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report. He co-authored the US National Research Council report on Abrupt Climate Change, and is currently on the National Research Council panel on CO2 stabilization targets, as well as being a member of their Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate. He has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the Republic of