Facing Climate Change Together

About this book

The vast majority of climate scientists now agree that human-induced climate change is a reality, but there is much ongoing research and debate. Nevertheless, our global society is confronted with the urgent need for a wise response to potential climate change. Facing Climate Change Together brings together scientists from the US and Europe to review the state-of-the-art in climate change science. It draws from the most recent assessment reports of the IPCC, but scientific jargon has been minimized for readers from different backgrounds. Each chapter provides a description of a particular aspect of the climate problem, its role in current climate change, its potential future impacts, and its societal importance. Facing Climate Change Together is written for scientists and students in a wide range of fields, such as atmospheric science, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, geology and socioeconomics, who are seeking a coherent and broad review of climate change issues.

Contents

Preface D. James Baker
Introduction Catherine Gautier and Jean-Louis Fellous

1. The global consensus and the intergovernmental panel on climate change Richard Somerville and Jean Jouzel
2. Greenhouse effect, radiation budget and clouds Catherine Gautier and Hervé Le Treut
3. Atmospheric aerosols and climate change Yoram J. Kaufman and Olivier Boucher
4. The global water cycle and climate Moustafa T. Chahine and Pierre Morel
5. Climate change effects on the water cycle over land Eric F. Wood and Katia Laval
6. Ocean and climate Carl Wunsch and Jean-François Minster
7. Ice and climate Raymond C. Smith and Frédérique Rémy
8. The changing global carbon cycle - from the holocene to the anthropocene Berrien Moore III and Philippe Ciais
9. Challenges of climate change: an arctic perspective and its implications Robert W. Corell
10. On some impacts of climate change over Europe and the Atlantic Jean-Claude André
11. Atmospheric chemistry and climate interactions Guy Brasseur and Marie-Lise Chanin
12. Observing system for climate Helen Wood and Jean-Louis Fellous
13. Climate and society - what is the human dimension? Roberta Balstad and Jean-Charles Hourcade

Conclusions S. Ichtiaque Rasool and Jean-Claude Duplessy
References
Glossary

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Biography

Catherine Gautier focuses her research in climate change science on the modeling and observation of cloud and aerosol effects on climate with an emphasis on absorbing aerosols (mineral and soot). She is also involved in educational aspects of climate change science and policy. Gautier has been a professor in the Geography Department at UC Santa Barbara since 1990, and directed the Institute for Computational Earth System Science from 1996 to 2002.

Jean-Louis Fellous joined the French space agency, CNES, in 1982 as program manager of the U.S.-French Topex/Poseidon oceanography satellite. He has headed the Earth Observation Programs at CNES since 1998 and was director for Ocean Research at Ifremer, the French ocean research institute, from 2001 until 2005. Fellous then worked with the European Space Agency as coordinator of Earth observation satellite programs related to climate, and was the Executive Officer of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS). He is a co-president of the Joint Technical Commission on Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM). He now works as the Executive Director of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).