Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole

Sarah Dry

noy 2019 · University of Chicago Press

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A Nature Top Ten Book of the Year: “Immensely readable” accounts of seven pioneers who were at the forefront of what we now call climate science (New York Review of Books).

One of Booklist’s Top Ten Sci-Tech Books of the Year

From the glaciers of the Alps to the towering cumulonimbus clouds of the Caribbean and the unexpectedly chaotic flows of the North Atlantic, Waters of the World is a tour through 150 years of the history of a significant but underappreciated idea: that the Earth has a global climate system made up of interconnected parts, constantly changing on all scales of both time and space. A prerequisite for the discovery of global warming and climate change, this idea was forged by scientists studying water in its myriad forms. This is their story.

Linking the history of the planet with the lives of those who studied it, Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who summited volcanic peaks to peer through an atmosphere’s worth of water vapor, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earth’s ancient climate history, and flew inside storm clouds to understand how small changes in energy can produce both massive storms and the general circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. Each toiled on his or her own corner of the planetary puzzle. Gradually, their cumulative discoveries coalesced into a unified working theory of our planet’s climate.

We now call this field climate science, and in recent years it has provoked great passions, anxieties, and warnings. But no less than the object of its study, the science of water and climate is—and always has been—evolving. By revealing the complexity of this history, Waters of the World delivers a better understanding of our planet’s climate at a time when we need it the most.

“One of the richest books I have ever read . . . a beautifully written, episodic, yet comprehensive, history of the diverse scientific underpinnings of climate science over the past two hundred years.” —Environmental History

“Smart, compelling, and timely . . . By focusing on specific scientists, Dry gifts readers with entertaining portraits of some thoroughly interesting if largely unknown individuals.”—Booklist (starred review)

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Sarah Dry is a writer and historian of science who has immersed herself in the history of meteorology and climate for more than ten years. She is the author of Curie and The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she now lives in Oxford, UK, with her family, and is a trustee of the Science Museum Group and the Oxford Trust.