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The subject of turbulence, the most forbidding in fluid dynamics, has usually proved treacherous to the beginner, caught in the whirls and eddies of its nonlinearities and statistical imponderables. This is the first book specifically designed to offer the student a smooth transitionary course between elementary fluid dynamics (which gives only last-minute attention to turbulence) and the professional literature on turbulent flow, where an advanced viewpoint is assumed.Moreover, the text has bee... View full Abstract »

More than half the globe is covered by visible clouds. Clouds control major parts of the Earth's energy balance, influencing both incoming shortwave solar radiation and outgoing longwave thermal radiation. Latent heating and cooling related to cloud processes modify atmospheric circulation, and, by modulating sea surface temperatures, clouds affect the oceanic circulation. Clouds are also an essential component of the global water cycle, on which all terrestrial life depends. Yet clouds cons... View full Abstract »

Earth System Analysis for Sustainability uses an integrated systems approach to provide a panoramic view of planetary dynamics since the inception of life some four billion years ago and to identify principles for responsible management of the global environment in the future. Perceiving our planet as a single entity with hypercomplex, often unpredictable behavior, the authors use Earth system analysis to study global changes past and future. They explore the question of whether the unprecedente... View full Abstract »

Energy in Nature and Society is a systematic and exhaustive analysis of all the major energy sources, storages, flows, and conversions that have shaped the evolution of the biosphere and civilization. Vaclav Smil uses fundamental unifying metrics (most notably for power density and energy intensity) to provide an integrated framework for analyzing all segments of energetics (the study of energy flows and their transformations). The book explores not only planetary energetics (such as solar radia... View full Abstract »

The burning of biomass - forests, grasslands, and agricultural fields after the harvest - is much more widespread and extensive than previously believed; most biomass burning is thought to be initiated by humans and is on the increase. This comprehensive volume is the first to consider biomass burning as a global phenomenon and to assess its impact on the atmosphere, on climate, and on the biosphere itself. The 63 chapters by 158 scientists - including leading biomass burn researchers from third... View full Abstract »

The products we purchase and use are assembled from a wide range of naturally occurring and manufactured materials. But too often we create hazards for the ecosystem and human health as we mine, process, distribute, use, and dispose of these materials. Until recently, most research has focused on the waste end of material cycles. This book argues that the safest and least costly point at which to avoid environmental damage is when materials are first designed and selected for use in industrial p... View full Abstract »

In this book Peter Lindert evaluates environmental concerns about soil degradation in two very large countries--China and Indonesia--where anecdotal evidence has suggested serious problems. Lindert does what no scholar before him has done: using new archival data sets, he measures changes in soil productivity over long enough periods of time to reveal the influence of human activity.China and Indonesia are good test cases because of their geography and history. China has been at the center of gl... View full Abstract »

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) offer an efficient method for finding optimal cleanup strategies for hazardous plumes contaminating groundwater by allowing hydrologists to rapidly search through millions of possible strategies to find the most inexpensive and effective containment of contaminants and aquifer restoration. ANNs also provide a faster method of developing systems that classify seismic events as being earthquakes or underground explosions.Farid Dowla and Leah Rogers have developed ... View full Abstract »

Tectonic faults are sites of localized motion, both at the Earth's surface and within its dynamic interior. Faulting is directly linked to a wide range of global phenomena, including long-term climate change and the evolution of hominids, the opening and closure of oceans, and the rise and fall of mountain ranges. In Tectonic Faults, scientists from a variety of disciplines explore the connections between faulting and the processes of the Earth's atmosphere, surface, and interior. They c... View full Abstract »

Americans take for granted that when we flip a switch the light will go on, when we turn up the thermostat the room will get warm, and when we pull up to the pump gas will be plentiful and relatively cheap. In The End of Energy, Michael Graetz shows us that we have been living an energy delusion for forty years. Until the 1970s, we produced domestically all the oil we needed to run our power plants, heat our homes, and fuel our cars. Since then, we have had to import most of the oil we use, much... View full Abstract »

In the nineteenth century, horse transportation consumed vast amounts of land for hay production, and the intense traffic and ankle-deep manure created miserable living conditions in urban centers. The introduction of the horseless carriage solved many of these problems but has created others. Today another revolution in transportation seems overdue. Transportation consumes two-thirds of the world's petroleum and has become the largest contributor to global environmental change. Most of this... View full Abstract »

This book brings together the methods, models and formulae used for estimating air pollution concentrations in urban areas.From the Foreword The visible effects of pollution in most cities in the developed countries have been reduced dramatically in the past thirty years. This has been achieved to a large extent by the replacement of most of the low-level sources, which burnt raw coal, by more modern appliances using gas, electricity or low-sulphur oil. The killer smog of 1952 could not be repea... View full Abstract »

Geologists in the field climb hills and hang onto craggy outcrops; they put their fingers in sand and scratch, smell, and even taste rocks. Beginning in 2004, however, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Clustered around monitors, living on Mars time, painstakingly plotting each movement of the rovers and the... View full Abstract »