Description: Greenhouse gases, global warming, rising sea levels -- understanding the earth's climatic changes is one of today's most pressing international concerns. How fast has the climate changed? Where and why is it changing? What is the impact of climate change on our ecosystems, coastal regions, glaciers, forests, lakes, and oceans?

This introduction to the rapidly emerging field of paleoclimatology explains the patterns and processes in the history of the Earth's climate to answer these essential questions. Using the geologic records of ocean and lake sediment, ice cores, corals, and other natural archives, "Principles of Paleoclimatology" describes the history of the Earth's climate -- the ice age cycles, sea level changes, volcanic activity, changes in atmosphere and solar radiation -- and the resulting, sometimes catastrophic, biotic responses. These paleoclimatic records provide a baseline against which we can compare modern climate trends. This groundbreaking book advances our understanding of how climate change occurs, how those changes are detected, and how the history of climate can suggest the climate of the future.

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