Book reviews acquired both ocean and atmosphere, nor how these evolved over eons to our present, turbulent, but astonishingly stable, balance over the last several hundred millions of years. Set in that context the possible future trends are merely planetary variations, but ones with daunting consequences for humankind!
The present-day large-scale air-sea interactions are addressed in Part 5, which introduces Dr Bigg's particular field of expertise: the El Nin หo oscillations (ENSO). Among other systems the part considers monsoons.
Part 6 makes a brave attempt to cover ocean-climate changes over the last 500 million years. This is an enormous task, far beyond the scope of a single volume. However, by concentrating on case studies for the Cretaceous, Quaternary, Holocene and twentieth century some balance is achieved and the reader's appetite wetted. Is it merely this reviewer's devious mind that notices these episodes are in a sequence of 10 to powers 8, 6, 4 and 2-years before the present? Despite the fact that many books have been written-and a prolific literature-on the climatic results and vice versa of the Quaternary glaciations alone, the book still provides a succinct and fresh presentation, which should stimulate researchers.
Part 7 tackles the thorny question of future climatic change. Dr Bigg adopts the sensible path of listing recognised variations revealed by hindcasting and the unpredictable occurrence of random high-energy events, such as comet/asteroid infalls. The part is particularly good at presenting the range of feedbacks and of buffering mechanisms-notably by our ocean's heat retention and biomass-and how these might apply to anthropogenic perceived threats.
In summary this book is an extremely valuable reference book on a immensely important subject for many scientific disciplines. Those studying these disciplines should realize the implications for peoples now and over the next few generations. Quite sober and predictable projections of acknowledged current climate trends have been assessed to suggest that the world's refugees will increase from a current figure of some 4 million (?arguable) to 20 million plus within 50 years! If this book provides a useful contribution to the very necessary cross-discipline researches to attempt to identify, and possibly mitigate, such effects, it will be more than jusitified.