Exploring Planetary Climate: A History of Scientific Discovery on Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan

Description

This book chronicles the history of climate science and planetary exploration, focusing on our ever-expanding knowledge of Earth’s climate, and the parallel research underway on some of our nearest neighbours: Mars, Venus and Titan. From early telescopic observation of clouds and ice caps on planetary bodies in the seventeenth century, to the dawn of the space age and the first robotic planetary explorers, the book presents a comprehensive chronological overview of planetary climate research, right up to the dramatic recent developments in detecting and characterising exoplanets. Meanwhile, the book also documents the discoveries about our own climate on Earth, not only about how it works today, but also how profoundly different it has been in the past. Highly topical and written in an accessible and engaging narrative style, this book provides invaluable historical context for students, researchers, professional scientists, and those with a general interest in planetary climate research.

With climate change, active missions to study the climates of our nearest planetary neighbours, and our first glimpses of climates on exoplanets, this is a highly topical subject
The engaging, narrative style makes it accessible for a range of readers, from students, researchers and professional scientists, to general interest readers
Draws together planetary science, meteorology, climate science and exoplanet astronomy, showing how planetary climate research has unfolded in parallel with our understanding of our own climate
Written by an active planetary scientist with first-hand experience of working on planetary science missions to Mars, Venus and Titan
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