The way it was

Two hundred years of soil moisture at Kew? Smog in the valley of Mexico? From details such as these, Hugh Lamb built up an extraordinarily detailed picture of the world’s changing climate. In the second edition of Climate, History and the Modern World (Routledge, £60 hbk, £15.99 pbk, ISBN 0 415 12734 3), Lamb explains how the climate works, and then pieces together records from around the world to show broad trends. In the 13 years since the first edition, climate has moved to the fore – people are now alive to the dangers of ozone depletion and long-term changes in the climate, but he mourns the sloppiness in the way that the changes are reported. Weather forecasters, for example, suggest that Britain is having a “bad” summer if it doesn’t resemble a Mediterranean.