It has been widely recognized recently that in order to make scientific progress on large and important problems (eg, carbon dioxide effects on climate, viability of various sites for nuclear waste disposal etc.), it is necessary to integrate knowledge from wide ranging sets of disciplines. This is certainly true in the climate sciences, for progress in understanding the cause of the ice ages or the effects of industrial pollution on the future climate or even the likelihood of severe climatic consequences in the aftermath of nuclear war. All require state-of -the -art input from many...

Climate is the most important component of the Earth's environment and climatic fluctuations have a strong impact on water supplies, vegetation, energy use etc. Thus our understanding of the climatic system is of utmost importance. Leading experts in the field of climate modelling and paleoclimatology present the most recent methods for reconstructing past climatic variations and for modelling the climatic system and its evolution. The first of three parts is devoted to the climatic system and the physical basis for its modelling; the second summarizes the evolution of the global atmosphere,...