Climate change: Recommended
Climate change at Virginia Tech
This guide provides a general introduction to resources on the topic of climate change. It is based in part on the following definition of climate change as provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which reads:
Climate change refers to any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer). Climate change may result from:natural factors, such as changes in the sun's intensity or slow changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun; natural processes within the climate system (e.g. changes in ocean circulation); human activities that change the atmosphere's composition (e.g. through burning fossil fuels) and the land surface (e.g. deforestation, reforestation, urbanization, desertification, etc.)
Those with an interest in other aspects of meteorology should also consult the subject guide for meteorology and weather.
Recommended online resources
- Environment Complete from EBSCOhostEnvironment Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles from journals, conference proceedings, and books on the agricultural, biological, social science, and technological aspects of the environment. Full text available in HTML and PDF. The database allows limiting to peer-reviewed journals. 1888-present.
- Environmental Science Index from ProQuestEnvironmental Science Index indexes citations, abstracts, and some full text from journals, conference papers and proceedings, special reports from international agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities, associations and private corporations, books, government studies and newsletters. It covers agricultural and biological science, social science, and technological aspects of the environment. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1975-present.
- Inspec from Engineering VillageInspec indexes literature for physics, computer science, electronics, and information technology. It includes scholarly articles, books, conference articles and proceedings, reports, standards, and some patents.
- Opposing Viewpoints In Context from GaleOpposing Viewpoints offers over 14,000 pro/con viewpoint essays on controversial topics and current events, plus thousands of topic overviews, primary source documents, biographies of social activists, court case overviews, related full-text periodical articles, statistical tables, and multimedia content.
Selected library resources
The University Libraries at Virginia Tech have numerous print and online books related to climate change in the collection. Below are examples of recent publications that present a range of perspectives in order to help fully understand the issues.
- Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies for Climate Change (online book)
- Assessing Climate Change: Temperatures, Solar Radiation and Heat Balance (online book)
- Climate Change : Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions
- Climate change : observed impacts on planet Earth
- Cool it : the skeptical environmentalist's guide to global warming
- The discovery of global warming
- Economics and Management of Climate Change (online book)
- Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences
- Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather
- Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change
- The encyclopedia of weather and climate change : a complete visual guide
- Encyclopedia of World Climatology (also available online )
- Facts on File Dictionary of Weather and Climate
- Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (also available online)
- Global warming
- Impact of Climate Change on Natural Resource Management (online book)
- Meteorology today : an introduction to weather, climate, and the environment
- Potential Impacts of Climate Change in the United States (also available online)
- Science and politics of global climate change: A guide to the debate
- Science as a contact sport : inside the battle to save Earth's climate
- Storms of my grandchildren : the truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity
- Why we disagree about climate change : understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity