Planetary Climates

This concise, sophisticated introduction to planetary climates explains the global physical and chemical processes that determine climate on any planet or major planetary satellite - from Mercury to Neptune and even large moons such as Saturn's Titan. Although the climates of other worlds are extremely diverse, the chemical and physical processes that shape their dynamics are the same. As this book makes clear, the better we can understand how various planetary climates formed and evolved, the better we can understand Earth's climate history and future.

This book examines the wide - ranging planetary climates of our solar system, describing what planetary exploration has revealed and what is still unknown. Along the way, readers learn the fundamental equations that describe how climate processes work, including atmospheric escape, convection, radiative heat transfer, condensation and evaporation, and the dynamics of rotating fluids. The result is an ideal introduction for science students and nonspecialist scientists, as well as general readers with a scientific background.