Product Description

The luminosity of the sun governs the temperature of the planets. And the solar forcing, or driving, of climate, primarily due to changes insolar radiation, is an idea whose history has not been well documented in a book. Recent satellite measurements have shown that solar radiation varies as a function of wavelength - a concept that for the past two centuries scientists have claimed would be proved. Now, with all of the attention being given to global warming, this topic has again become timely. The book will review the physics of the concept of solar forcing in manageable terms, tracing its history from its beginnings in the early 1800s toits apparent success in the 1920s, to its near demise in the 1950s and its resurrection in recent years. Emphasis will be on solar variation as a driver for climate change, with only a brief discussion of other mechanisms - thus assuring the book a clear focus.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3069172 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
"Douglas Hoyt and Kenneth Schatten point out that the large numbers of sunspots during the 11th and 12th centuries made Earth significantly warmer, allowing Vikings to settle in Greenland, for example. The authors review many historical studies of the Sun's influence on climate. A successful blend of astronomical and climate studies with modern scientific and statistical analysis, this history of solar observations is followed by a review of how variations in solar brightness have been measured, both from the ground and space." --New Scientist
"Hoyt and Schatten's book is a fascinating and well written history of this interesting chapter of science that is relevant to the understanding of the earth system on one hand and to the increasingly fierce battle between conservationists and industrialists concerning global warming, on the other. The well organized book takes the reader in a carefully planned and cross-referenced way from the sun to the earth, and from Theophrastus in the fourth century B.C. to solar-terrestrial physicists in the early 1990s."--Journal of Geoscience Education
"Douglas Hoyt and Kenneth Schatten. . .review the effects that solar irradiance variations have in producing climate changes. The book summarizes both the history and our present understanding of this field, so as to provide a solid foundation for graduate students, current researchers and interested scientists in related fields. The book is easy to read, well written, and hard to put down. . . .The two most important problems examined by the book concern the presence of sign reversals in the observed correlations and the fact that the climate variations that are observed are larger by a factorof ten than simple energy-balance calculations can account for. The book reviews the possible explanations for these problems and is quite successful in giving the reader a well-balanced picture of the field."--Physics Today
"This book approaches the sun-climate connection as an ongoing journey. In three parts, the authors present material on solar activity, development of humankind's understanding of the sun, and the sun's variations; the sun-climate connection, particularly on the 11-year timescale; and possible alternative explanations for variations. Throughout the book, the authors pose the question Does the sun affect the climate?' and present evidence to support and to discount the theory." --Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
"A valuable resource to those engaged in global warming studies and interpreting the effect of the sun on the Earth's climate changes. . . . The book is divided into three parts. The first part . . . is an examination of solar activity throughout history to reveal the slow development of our understanding of the sun. . . . The second part . . . deals with the climate and the sun-climate connection. The final part . . . discusses possible alternative explanations for variations in the sun and climate on time scales from decades to billions of years. . . . The book has an impressive bibliography of nearly 2000 articles and papers on the sun's influence on weather and climate dating back to 1796. . . . the book could be used as a reference text for students in the civil or environmental engineering programs when they do course work in hydrology, water and wastewater management, and land-use planning."--Geo Info Systems

From the Author
Physics Today book review
This book was reviewed in the June 1998 issue of Physics Today by Edgar A. Bering III. He says: "The book summarizes both the history and our present understanding of this field, so as to provide a solid foundation for graduate students, current researchers, and interested scientists in related fields. The book is easy to read, well written, and hard to put down."

Customer Reviews

A skeptical view and enjoyable read of a "hot" topic.
In "The Role of the Sun in Climate Change" the reader finds an entertaining tale told by two scientists. Often in today's debate on global climate change, readers are forced to listen to politicians or the media. This book serves as a refreshing change from that paradigm. Not only is the reader presented with a skeptical view of the facts of global climate change, but the reader may also enjoy the writing style which one rarely finds in writings by scientists. The opening sentence of Chapter 1 sounds like a novel when these scientists describe how one scientist, from an era long gone, went about his daily observing. They even display a sense of humor in their chapters and their titles, as in Chapter 9, "Cyclomania" where they set out to describe many of the different cyclic processes involved in both the sun and climate, and how so many cycles can be used or abused. This book can be enjoyed while commuting to work (as long as you are not the driver) as well as an introduction for serious studies. It contains an extensive bibliography.