Details

ISBN-10: 0226816842
ISBN-13: 9780226816845
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publish Date: 10/15/2021
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 6.00" W, 0.71" H

Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet

Paperback

Price: $20.00

Overview

The compelling and adventurous stories of seven pioneering scientists who were at the forefront of what we now call climate science.

From the glaciers of the Alps to the towering cumulonimbus clouds of the Caribbean and the unexpectedly chaotic flows of the North Atlantic, Waters of the World is a tour through 150 years of the history of a significant but underappreciated idea: that the Earth has a global climate system made up of interconnected parts, constantly changing on all scales of both time and space. A prerequisite for the discovery of global warming and climate change, this idea was forged by scientists studying water in its myriad forms. This is their story.

Linking the history of the planet with the lives of those who studied it, Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who summited volcanic peaks to peer through an atmosphere’s worth of water vapor, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earth’s ancient climate history, and flew inside storm clouds to understand how small changes in energy can produce both massive storms and the general circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. Each toiled on his or her own corner of the planetary puzzle. Gradually, their cumulative discoveries coalesced into a unified working theory of our planet’s climate.

We now call this field climate science, and in recent years it has provoked great passions, anxieties, and warnings. But no less than the object of its study, the science of water and climate is–and always has been–evolving. By revealing the complexity of this history, Waters of the World delivers a better understanding of our planet’s climate at a time when we need it the most.

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Reviews
"In the eight detailed, immensely readable essays of Waters of the World, Dry shows how over the past 150 years scientists have slowly come to see climate as a global system, and to recognize how human activity contributes to changes in the complex interactions of ice, oceans, and the atmosphere. . . . Dry looks beneath her subjects' masks with sympathy and curiosity. Noting their shared sense of a quest, at once playful and serious, in the end she turns back to the reader: 'They each, in their own way, sought something deeply meaningful from their engagement with the planet. So should we all.'"–Jenny Uglow "New York Review of Books"
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Details

ISBN-10: 0226816842
ISBN-13: 9780226816845
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publish Date: 10/15/2021
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 6.00" W, 0.71" H
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