Climate is the most important component of the Earth's environment and climatic fluctuations have a strong impact on water supplies, vegetation, energy use etc. Thus our understanding of the climatic system is of utmost importance. Leading experts in the field of climate modelling and paleoclimatology present the most recent methods for reconstructing past climatic variations and for modelling the climatic system and its evolution. The first of three parts is devoted to the climatic system and the physical basis for its modelling; the second summarizes the evolution of the global atmosphere, the ocean, the continents, the biosphere, and the ice sheets during recent climatic cycles; the last part focusses on the understanding of past and future climatic changes.

Inhalt
I - The Climate System and Its Modelling.- Modeling Long-Term Climatic Changes.- Climate Models for the Study of Paleoclimates.- Global Atmospheric Modelling.- Modelling the Ocean Circulation.- Precession, Eccentricity, Obliquity, Insolation and Paleoclimates.- Biosphere Modeling for Climate Studies.- II - Geological Evidences.- Mid-latitude Ice Sheets Through the Last Glacial Cycle: Glaciological and Geological Reconstructions.- The Climatic Record from Antarctic Ice Now Extends Back to 220 kyr BP.- Organic Compounds as Proxy-Indicators of Sea Surface Palaeotemperature: the Uk37 Index.- Evidence for a Change in Atmospheric Circulation During the Younger Dryas.- Temperature of the Last Interglacial Based on ?18O in Mollusks.- Reconstruction of Climatic Zonality in the Indian Ocean During the Neogene.- Surface and Deep Water Circulation Changes During the Last Climatic Cycle.- Statistical Analyses of Biospherical Variability.- Lacustrine Diatoms for Reconstructing Past Hydrology and Climate.- Andean Snowline Evidence for Cooler Subtropics at the Last Glacial Maximum.- Effects of Short and Long Term Climatic Changes on Permafrost - Sedimentological Data.- Box Jenkins Multivariate Modelling and Co-integration: Two Statistical Methods with Potential Usefulness in Climatic Studies.- III - Understanding Climatic Changes.- Measuring the Gain of the Climate System's Response to Milankovitch Forcing in the Precession and Obliquity Bands.- The Last Two Glacial-lnterglacial Cycles Simulated by the LLN Model.- Physics of the Ice Age Cycle.- A Model Study of the Glacial Oceanic Circulation.- OGCM-constraints to PM's.- Mid-latitude Depressions During the Last Ice-Age.- Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age : Impact of a Long-Term Variation of the Solar Flux on the Energy andWater Cycle.- Climate Model Sensitivity, Paleoclimate and Future Climate Change.