A highly authoritative, yet accessible guide to the world's climate, its effects and its future. Lively illuminating text from an expert author combines with specially commissioned illustrations and colour photographs to make complex ideas easy to understand. Feature articles explore dramatic or controversial aspects of the climate - from the explosive outpourings of volcanoes to the disasters wreaked by hurricanes. The author looks to the future to present all sides of the debate over climate change and its possible implications for humanity as well as to the past to reveal how the climate has changed over the centuries.