The Oceans and Rapid Climate Change - Hardcover

by Dan Seidov (Author)

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 126.

Until a few decades ago, scientists generally believed that significant large-scale past global and regional climate changes occurred at a gradual pace within a time scale of many centuries or millennia. A secondary assumption followed: climate change was scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. Recent paleoclimatic studies, however, have proven otherwise: that global climate can change extremely rapidly. In fact, there is good evidence that in the past at least regional mean annual temperatures changed by several degrees Celsius on a time scale of several centuries to several decades.

Back Jacket

Ocean impacts on Earth's climate are due to thermal, freshwater, and dynamic interactions between elements of the climate system. The Oceans and Rapid Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future presents a unique multidisciplinary perspective on rapid past and possible future climate change. By focusing on ocean processes in conjunction with other climatic elements, the authors of this volume address fundamental unresolved issues of climatology and paleoclimatology, including factors that may influence internal long-term variability of the climate system. Discussions of paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic reconstructions parallel efforts in modeling past and future, colder and warmer, climates. A significant resource for scientists, researchers, students and others interested in paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, and the future of Earth's climate system.

Author Biography

Dan Seidov and Bernd J. Haupt are the authors of The Oceans and Rapid Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future, published by Wiley.