Quick Look
Takes recent extreme weather events such as hurricanes, drought, floods and heavy snow fall, and considers the human cost, the causes, and what might happen in the future.
Description
Record-breaking extreme weather conditions are on the rise. Violent and frequent hurricanes, unparalleled drought, tropical storms, rivers at unprecedently low levels in the Amazon Basin, vanishing glaciers, melting poles and rising sea levels all signal dramatic changes in our climate.
Peter Bunyard, recognised internationally as an expert on climate change, here describes and explores recent extreme weather events, including Hurricane Katrina, the Alpine floods of 2005 and the heavy European and American snowfalls of 2006. Fully illustrated with stunning colour photographs, this book looks at what happened, the human cost, what caused it, and what can be done to change things for the future.
This book will appeal to all those who watched the BBC's Planet Earth series, followed the Hurricane Katrina story or have been caught in extreme weather conditions in recent years, and want to know why.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Storm Surges
2. Heatwaves and Drought
3. Global Meltdown
4. Floods, Typhoons and Monsoon Winds
5. Where Have All the Rainforests Gone?
6. Extreme Weather and Climate Forecasting
7. Living in Daisyworld?
8. Fiddling While the Planet Burns
9. Our Future on This Planet
Reviews
'Illustrated with more than 150 striking photographs and diagrams, this absorbing book sets out the options available to us when faced with such extreme weather and the challenges of climate change. The author concludes that the choice is survival or extinction - and that that choice is still within our hands.'
-- The Environmentalist, May 2008
Author
Peter Bunyard studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and Harvard, and is adjunct faculty on the University of Boston Study Abroad Programme. A founding editor of The Ecologist magazine, he is a Fellow of the Linnean Society. He regularly lectures in South America on the climatic importance of the Amazonian rainforest. He is author of The Breakdown of Climate and editor of Gaia in Action (both Floris Books).
Links
For more on climate:
Climate: Soul of the Earth by Dennis Klocek
Also by Peter Bunyard:
The Breakdown of Climate
Gaia in Action
