Fully Updated Climate Change Book by Scripps Researcher Now Available

A comprehensive and up-to-date account of climate change science by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego climate scientist Richard Somerville is now available from the American Meteorological Society.

Twelve years after its initial publication, The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change updates the critical issue of climate change with the latest science including the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. The book weaves together complex topics such as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, air pollution and the ozone hole in an easy-to-understand story. Somerville was a coordinating lead author in Working Group I, which produced a key portion of the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report.

Somerville, a distinguished professor emeritus at Scripps, was also an organizer of the 2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists, an effort by climate scientists to inject some quantitative scientific substance into United Nations climate negotiations that took place in Indonesia in December 2007.

"Over the 20-year history of the IPCC, both the observational evidence for a warming world and the scientific understanding of the causes of warming have strengthened remarkably," notes Somerville in the preface to the second edition. "Today, climate science is able to inform governments, corporations, the media, and the global public, as humankind attempts to formulate policies in response to the prospect of future climate change."

Somerville joined Scripps as a professor in 1979. He is a theoretical meteorologist whose major research interests are the greenhouse effect and global climate change. He is a specialist in computer modeling of the climate system. His latest research has focused on the role of clouds, cloud-radiation interactions, and cloud feedbacks in climate.

Somerville continues to work with business, government and the public to inform them about important recent research in the science of climate change.

With more than 12,000 members, the AMS is the nation's leading professional soci¬ety for those involved in the atmospheric and related sciences. The book costs $16 for AMS members and $22 for non-members. It is available directly from the AMS, which takes orders via telephone at (617) 227-2426 x 686 or online at amsorder@ametsoc.org.