Understanding the earth’s climate system has never been more crucial.

At a time when the evidence is stronger than ever that human activity is the primary cause for global climate change, Ruddiman's breakthrough text provides a thorough and multi-disciplinary introduction to the earth’s climate. It offers a clear, engaging, objective portrait of the current state of climate science, including compelling recent findings on global warming and important advances in understanding past climates.

Emphasizing the interconnected nature of environmental geology and the multidimensional processes of the Earth, this highly anticipated new edition of Merritt's classic text provides a balanced approach to environmental issues and builds an informed student understanding with case studies, conceptual explanations, and relevant presentation of material. By far the most concise book for its course, it remains the only textbook to use an earth systems approach to exploring how the Earth works, t...