Waters of the World : The Story of the Scientists Who Unravelled the Mysteries of Our Seas Glaciers and Atmosphere

How is the climate where you are? And how did it get that way? How does the great complex global interaction of ice, ocean, and atmosphere combine to generate the rain that sustains us? And who figured all its secret processes out?

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 ascended volcanic peaks to peer through an atmospheres worth of water vapour, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earths 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 Earths 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 planets 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 planets climate at a time when we need it the most.

Featured in the September 2019 Trades and Technologies newsletter.
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