The science of climate change has experienced an extraordinary expansion in the period since the mid-1980s and is paralleled by considerable public and political awareness of related issues. The degree of natural variability in and the causes of climate change have become particularly important points of debate and the past decade has seen many publications dealing with these issues. Indeed, the area of climate research as a whole is so large and the sources of data so diverse that many researchers are unaware of significant developments across the field.