The Holocene: An Environmental History
In its first edition, The Holocene provided undergraduates with a much needed coherent scientific account of the great transformation of nature that had taken place during the Holocene, the last 10,000 years in the history of the planet and the period in which we are all now living This period has
Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto
Alan Stern and David Grinspoon take us behind the scenes of the science, politics, egos, and public expectations that fueled the greatest space mission of our time New Horizons misison to Pluto On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe
What determines whether complex life will arise on a planet, or even any life at all Questions such as these are investigated in this groundbreaking book In doing so, the authors synthesize information from astronomy, biology, and paleontology, and apply it to what we know about the rise of life
Planetary Sciences
Planetary Sciences presents a comprehensive coverage of this fascinating and expanding field at a level appropriate for graduate students and researchers in the physical sciences The book explains the wide variety of physical, chemical and geological processes that govern the motions and properties
Climate and Ecosystems
How does life on our planet respond to and shape climate This question has never been urgent than it is today, when humans are faced with the daunting task of guiding adaptation to an inexorably changing climate This concise, accessible, and authoritative book provides an unmatched
Paleoclimate
Earth s climate has undergone dramatic changes over the geologic timescale At one extreme, Earth has been glaciated to the equator for periods that may have lasted millions of years At another, temperatures were once so warm that the Canadian Arctic was heavily forested and large dinosaurs lived
The Cryosphere
The cryosphere encompasses the Earth s snow and ice masses It is a critical part of our planet s climate system, one that is especially at risk from climate change and global warming The Cryosphere provides an essential introduction to the subject, written by one of the world s leading experts in
Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World
How can you make sense of a world where no one has ever lived Acclaimed science writer Oliver Morton tells the story of the heroic landscapes of Mars, now better mapped in some ways than the Earth itself Mapping Mars introduces the reader to the nineteenth century visionaries and spy satellite
Oxygen: A Four Billion Year History
The air we breathe is twenty one percent oxygen, an amount higher than on any other known world While we may take our air for granted, Earth was not always an oxygenated planet How did it become this way Oxygen is the most current account of the history of atmospheric oxygen on Earth Donald
Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate
The atmosphere is critical to climate change It can amplify shifts in the climate system, and also mitigate them This primer offers a short, reader friendly introduction to these atmospheric processes and how they work, written by a leading expert on the subject Giving readers an overview of key
Planetary Atmospheres
The emphasis of Planetary Atmospheres is on comparative aspects of planetary atmospheres, generally meaning comparison with the Earth, including atmospheric composition, thermal structure, cloud properties, dynamics, weather and climate, and aeronomy The goal is to look for common processes at work
Cosmic Biology: How Life Could Evolve on Other Worlds
Life may unfold in various forms throughout the universe, constrained by universal physical laws and consistent principles of organic evolution, but propelled to great variety in detail by local conditions and the specifics of planetary history What is known of the chemical and physical conditions
Unmasking Europa - The search for life on Jupiter's ocean moon
A Close Look at Europa And How Big Science Gets Done The second outward of Jupiter s four major moons, Europa is covered with ice, as confirmed in views from modern telescopes and the thousands of images returned by NASA s Voyager and Galileo missions But these higher resolution views
Climate and the Oceans
The oceans exert a vital moderating influence on the Earth s climate system They provide inertia to the global climate, essentially acting as the pacemaker of climate variability and change, and they provide heat to high latitudes, keeping them habitable Climate and the Oceans offers a short,
Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us
It s invisible It s ever present Without it, you would die in minutes And it has an epic story to tell.In Caesar s Last Breath, New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe, and across time to tell the story of the air we breathe,
Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional-and What That Means for Life in the Universe
Humankind has long fantasized about life elsewhere in the universe And as we discover countless exoplanets orbiting other stars among them, rocky super Earths and gaseous Hot Jupiters we become ever hopeful that we may come across extraterrestrial life Yet even as we become aware of the vast
Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction
Astrobiology is an exciting new subject, and one, arguably, interdisciplinary than any other Astrobiologists seek to understand the origin and evolution of life on Earth in order to illuminate and guide the search for life on other planets In this Very Short Introduction, David C Catling