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Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary, Third Edition-winner of a 2015 Textbook Excellence Award (Texty) from The Text and Academic Authors Association-provides a thorough overview of the methods of paleoclimatic reconstruction and of the historical changes in climate during the past three million years.
This thoroughly updated and revised edition systematically examines each type of proxy and elucidates the major attributes and the limitations of each. Paleoclimatology, Third Edition provides necessary context for those interested in understanding climate changes at present and how current trends in climate compare with changes that have occurred in the past. The text is richly illustrated and includes an extensive bibliography for further research.
List of contents
1. Paleoclimatic reconstruction2. Climate and climatic variation3. Dating methods I4. Dating methods II5. Ice cores6. Marine sediments7. Loess8. Speleothems9. Lake sediments10. Non-marine geological evidence11. Insects and other biological evidence from continental regions12. Pollen13. Tree rings14. Corals15. Historical documents
Appendix 1: Further considerations on radiocarbon datingAppendix 2: Internet resources in paleoclimatology
About the author
Raymond S. Bradley has been involved in many national and international activities related to paleoclimatology, most notably as the current Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program on Past Global Changes (IGBP-PAGES). He has published dozens of articles in scientific journals, and has edited several important books in paleoclimatology. The first edition of Quaternary Paleoclimatology has been the definitive text in this field for over a decade. His research is in climatology, specifically in climatic change and the evidence for how the earth’s climate has varied in the past. He has carried out research on climate variation, both on the long (glacial and interglacial) time-scale and on the short (historical and instrumental) time-scale, involving the analysis of data from all over the world. In recent years he has been involved in studies of natural climate variability, to provide a background for understanding potential anthropogenic changes in climate resulting from rapid increases in "greenhouse gases" over the last century or so. R.S. Bradley has been a professor in the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, since 1984. He has been Head of the Department of Geosciences since 1993. Additionally, he is a member of Clare Hall at Cambridge.
Report
"It is difficult to conceive of the vast amount of work that must have gone into this comprehensive revision, and it is a great service to the international Quaternary research community." --The Holocene
"The book has been thoroughly updated since the previous edition... Valuable for specialist collections...Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations." --CHOICE Reviews Online, Nov 01 2014
