Understanding Climate Change: Science, Policy, and Practice

Conversations about climate change are filled with challenges involving complex data, deeply held values, and political issues. Understanding Climate Change examines climate change as both a scientific and a public policy issue. Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris explain the basics of the climate system, climate models and prediction, and human and biophysical impacts, as well as strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The second edition has been fully updated throughout, including coverage of new advances in climate modelling and of the shifting landscape of renewable energy production and distribution. A brand new chapter discusses global governance, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, as well as mitigation efforts at the national and subnational levels. This new chapter makes the book even more relevant to climate change courses housed in social sciences departments such as political science and geography.

An effective and integrated introduction to an urgent and controversial issue, this book is well-suited to adoption in a variety of introductory climate change courses found in a number of science and social science departments. Its ultimate goal is to equip readers with the tools needed to become constructive participants in the human response to climate change.

Sarah L. Burch is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Governance and Innovation in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. She is a Lead Author in the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.


Sara E. Harris is a professor of teaching in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, where she has taught since 2005. In 2017, she started a stint in the Faculty of Science Dean’s Office as Associate Dean Academic. She has the true honour of being a member of the marvelous 2015 3M National Teaching Fellow cohort.