Abstract
Essentials of the Earth’s Climate System is an introduction to modern climatology and is targeted at first (or second) year students, who need a basic training in what is not necessarily their main subject. I believe that this title has what it takes to become a popular choice with lecturers (in Earth Sciences or Physical Geography, for example), who have considered the modern day likes and needs of their undergraduate students.
The book is affordable; it is relatively comprehensive yet concise, and essentially non-mathematical. It makes plentiful use of illustrations and examples (e.g. supplementary text boxes and 110 full colour figures), but the main text remains focused throughout. The book contains appendices (S.I. units; web links), a 5-page index and a useful 17-page glossary. Didactic features include chapter summaries and self-help revision questions. The 10-page bibliography strikes a good balance between an ‘expected’ minimum number of relevant sources for further reading and an ‘overly comprehensive’ list of references that may be experienced as daunting by first-year students.
The topics covered in the book are ‘The elements of climate: a global view of energy and moisture’ (Chapter 2); ‘The elements of climate: a global view of pressure, winds and storms’ (Chapter 3); ‘Local and microclimates’ (Chapter 4); ‘The general circulation’ (a discussion of pressure cells and belts – Chapter 5); ‘Circulation modes’ (highlighting the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific oscillations, etc. – Chapter 6); ‘Synoptic climatology’ (Chapter 7); ‘Land and sea effects’ (discussing air-sea interactions, oceanic currents an associated energy transport – Chapter 8); ‘Climatic types on land’ (including a summary of classification schemes – Chapter 9); ‘Past climates’ (of the Cenozoic, Quaternary (including Holocene) and Anthropocene – Chapter 10); ‘Future climate’ (Chapter 11); and ‘Applied climatology’ (discussing disasters, agriculture, forecasts, insurance, water and renewable energy resources – Chapter 12).
Because of its publication date of March 2014, the book just missed out on the opportunity to include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR), and had to rely mainly on the findings of the 2007 report. Nevertheless, the authors elegantly by-passed this ‘problem’ in Chapter 11 by referring to the latest predictions and forecasts from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, and the Climate Modelling Intercomparison Project, which obviously have fed directly into the IPCC 5th AR. In other words, the book is as up-to-date as one would expect (although the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth is now −94.7°C and no longer −89.2°C (p. 169)).
So, overall I think this is an excellent introductory text on the Earth’s climate system, and I have already recommended it to a colleague who teaches a large first-year Geography cohort. However, there are two things I feel I should also mention (although I recognise that these may relate to personal preferences or dislikes). First, I can obviously see the advantage of a non-mathematical treatise of climatological principles for a readership of ‘non-specialist’ undergraduate students, but personally I would have liked to see the inclusion of some maths for general clarity. As it stands, I have experienced some parts of the text as somewhat awkward because of desperate attempts to avoid equations. The choice of leaving out the laws of, for example, Kirchhoff, Wien, Stefan–Boltzmann, Planck and Penman–Monteith (in sections on thermodynamics and evaporation) as well as circumventing Coriolis and vorticity equations (in discussions about currents, fronts, convergence and circulation patterns) may even have deprived more ‘numerically oriented’ students of additional learning opportunities.
Second, while the figures and diagrams are generally of high quality, I could not help noticing that quite a few were reproduced from Wikipedia or from other textbooks by the senior author. Although I am very much against re-inventing the wheel, I cannot really get used to the idea that Wikipedia figures are included in a student textbook in the knowledge that most lecturers try actively to discourage the use of Wikipedia as a major (or main) source of information.
Finally, the ‘borrowing’ of several figures from Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (Barry and Chorley, 2010), the classic textbook which is now in its ninth edition, suggests that this and the book reviewed here are very closely related. The main difference that I have been able to identify is that the title reviewed here is more concise and arguably more student-friendly. I expect that if a textbook is to be used for one-semester courses or in support of short undergraduate modules, Essentials of the Earth’s Climate System may have the edge over the more comprehensive Atmosphere, Weather and Climate.