Written from a multidisciplinary perspective by one of the field's preeminent researcher/instructors, Earth's Climate: Past and Future became a classroom favorite by providing an expert summary of climate change past, present, and future. The text worked equally well as either a nonmajors introduction to Earth system science or climate change, or as an upper-undergraduate-level overview of the processes and techniques in climate science.

The new edition incorporates coverage of climatological events and research discoveries in the seven years since the first edition, most importantly the now broadly accepted understanding that humans play a major role in warming the planet. It also incorporates changes designed to make the material more accessible to an introductory-level audience.