The Two-Mile Time Machine : Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future - Updated Edition / Richard B. Alley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alley, Richard B., author.

Contributor:

Alley, Richard B.

Series:

Princeton science library.

Princeton Science Library ; 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Paleoclimatology.

Ice--Analysis.

Climatic changes.

Ice--analysis--Greenland.

Ice.

Ice--Greenland--Analysis.

Greenland.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 pages)

Edition:

Updated edition with a New Preface

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the 1990s Richard B. Alley and his colleagues made headlines with the discovery that the last ice age came to an abrupt end over a period of only three years. In The Two-Mile Time Machine, Alley tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. He explains that humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate compared to the wild fluctuations that characterized most of prehistory. He warns that our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years and tells us what we need to know in order to understand and perhaps overcome climate changes in the future.In a new preface, the author weighs in on whether our understanding of global climate change has altered in the years since the book was first published, what the latest research tells us, and what he is working on next.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustration

Preface to the New Paperback Edition

PART I. SETTING THE STAGE

1. Fast Forward

2. Pointers to the Past

PART II. READING THE RECORD

3. Going to Greenland

4. The Icy Archives-Ice Sheets and Glaciers

5. Ice Age through the Ice Age

6. How Cold of Old?

7. Dust in the Wind

8. Tiny Bubbles in the Ice

PART III. CRAZY CLIMATES

9. The Saurian Sauna

10. The Solar System Swing

11. Dancing to the Orbital Band

12. What the Worms Turned

PART IV. WHY THE WEIRDNESS?

13. How Climate Works

14. A Chaotic Conveyor?

15. Shoving the System

PART V. COMING CRAZINESS?

16. Fuelish

17. Down the Road

18. An Ice-Core View of the Future

APPENDIXES

Appendix 1. A Cast of Characters

Appendix 2. Usage of Units

Sources and Related Information

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9780691004938

0691004935

9781400852246

1400852242

OCLC:

882608789