Saeed S. Alshahrani

Climate science comes as one of the most influential disciplines in these days not only for geology but also for other sciences like chemistry, astronomy, ocean science, computer modeling, metrology as well as climatology. As we can notice at any moment, the climate is changing season by season, and year by year. Scientists are concerned to understand how the past climate has changed, and depending on that understanding, they are able to know what effects can change the present climate and how those effects can be used to model the future climate. This book, Paleoclimates, understanding climate change past and present, was published in 1983 and copyrighted in 2009 by Columbia University Press. Thomas M. Cronin, who is the author for this book, is one of the most important scientists in the world in this field. He wrote many books and some research to give a reasonable understanding of the meaning of climate change and paleoclimatology. On the other hand, there was much research about fossils, and he examined them to find the relation between fossil age and climate change. He received his PhD in geology from Harvard University in deep-sea fossils; he found that foraminifera and ostracods may give us the full concepts of the natural life of the deep-sea. He works now in USGS as a senior scientist. His book contains 12 chapters, and the aims of this book are to describe the patterns of past climate and the causes of its change. Therefore, as we could understand the past climate, we can examine the present climate and model the future. According to Cronin, “the word paleoclimatology comes from the prefix “paleo,” which means old, and “kilmate,” from Greek word for inclination or latitude.”
Cronin introduced his book in the first chapter, and he then typified the causes of climate change. Then, he moved to the next chapter to describe the methods of paleoclimatology. After that, he studied, in three chapters, the geological time scale from deep time 3.6 billion years, Mid Archean, Precambrian, to Holocene, the last 125 thousand years. Other chapters explain the abrupt events and glacial changes and how the climate had been affected by those two factors. Finally, he tried to describe the internal methods of climate variability. The first two chapters, in my opinion, are the most important in this book. The author divided the first chapter into three main points which cover all the parts of the earth, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the lithosphere. In the second chapter, Cronin used only two methods to study climate, last events, and dating and correlation. The last events contain sediment records, sedimentation rate, evaporation, and paleosols whereas the author used in this book only two methods of a radiometric dating method such the 14Carbon and 137Cesium.
This book seems to be one of the most important references in paleoclimatology. Those people who need to understand climate change or perform research about paleoclimatology need to obtain this book because it contains very powerful information. I think the book has achieved its goals as it covers most past events and gives the present understanding. It also depicts a clear view of future climate modeling. However, as there are more than 25 years between the publication and the copyrighting, and because science and technology have advanced day by day, it is better, for both the author and the publisher, to update the book not only for the information but also for the formulae. For instance, scientists found microfossils of the Early Archean Eon, 3.8 billion years ago, and they also explored some impact events in the Hadean Eon, 4 billion years ago. Those Eons were two parts of the early Precambrian age. Unfortunately, this book did not contain those events. On the other hand, the author described only two types of dating, 14Carbon and 137Cesium. The two half-lives of those radiations are 5730 and 30.07 years, respectively. So how could we date the fossils which have lived before those ages? The half-life of the 235Uranium is 704 to 713 million years and 40Potassium to 40Argon have a half-life of 1,300 million years. I think the last two dating methods are more reasonable and effective to use, study, and apply rather than 14Carbon or 137Cesium. The main point here is that the author has left out and did not look for the Early Precambrian Eras and some Epochs such as Pleistocene and Late Jurassic. Another main thing is that there are many other important dating methods; he did not consider them as they can give the very oldest age. As I read most of this book twice, I found the organization is distracted at many times. For example, when I tried to search about Sulfate Aerosols, I found it in three separate chapters as subtitles. So, if I had composed this book, I would have organized it by events and subjects not as Cronin did. The book has left out the extremely important thing for dating and past climate change: fossils. Fossils are considered the first significant evidence to understand past environments. On the other hand, I could not compare this book to others on the same subject because this one is rich in information and contains a summary of more than 5 thousand references including of research, articles, and books. If I had written this book, I would have added some additional information for fossils and dating methods.
In summary, I recommend reading this book, not only for those disciplines which I write in this paper, but also for all people to understand how the climate has come to be as we see in these days. I believe it is easy to follow and smooth to understand. Nevertheless, if the book had included more details for the dating methods and fossils, it could have been more effective.

Reference
Cronin, T.(2009). Paleoclimatology, understanding climate change past and present. New Yory, NY. Columbia University Press.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2012 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.