Paleoclimatology

Book · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:6506929

Crowley, T J; North, G R

The 1980s began with the publication of a signal pioneering work in this general field: T.J.M. Schopf's Paleoceanography (Harvard University Press). What followed might be called the decade of climate modelling, or at least the decade when climate modelling increasingly worked back in time and broadened to include the oceans, when modelling emerged as a formidable tool for investigation of the geological past. Crowley (Applied Research Corporation) and North (Texas A M) have been prominent players in this new game, and they bring authoritative insight to this volume. The book is logically organized and suitable for a graduate textbook. It begins appropriately with an elementary description of energy balance models applied to the present world climate. An innovation of particular interest is the concept of instabilities owing to nonlinear feedbacks, which may account for catastrophic events such as the abrupt retreat of an ince cap. The introductory chapters continue with a generalized treatment of the present atmospheric and oceanic circulation and the global distribution of sea surface temperature and salinity. The differential equations that drive the general circulation models (GCMs) are laid out in principle, and the formidable complications of coupling the ocean into the system are outlined. This game is apparently one in which available computer time rarely catches up with the demands of its increasing complexity. The main part of the volume consists of five chapters on aspects of Quaternary climates, and another five chapters that move the reader backward through geological time to finally confront the dim mysteries of the Precambrian. These chapters each include a critical discussion of the ground truth - that which is already known about the climate of each geological interval, including evaluation of a wide variety of climatically sensitive proxy parameters: flora, fauna, glacial deposits, evaporites, coals, and isotope ratios of oxygen and carbon.

• OSTI ID: 6506929
• Resource Relation: Other Information: From review by William T. Holser, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY and Univ. of Oregon, Eugene in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 57, No. 7 (April 1993)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
PALEOCLIMATOLOGY
REVIEWS
CARBON DIOXIDE
CLIMATIC CHANGE
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
ENERGY BALANCE
GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS
ISOTOPE RATIO
QUATERNARY PERIOD
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBON OXIDES
CENOZOIC ERA
CHALCOGENIDES
DOCUMENT TYPES
EQUATIONS
GEOLOGIC AGES
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
PALEONTOLOGY
540110*