A Voyage Through Scales

Book excerpt: Zoom into a cloud. Zoom out of a rock. Watch the volcano explode, the lightning strike, an aurora undulate. Imagine ice sheets expanding, retreating - pulsating - while continents continue their leisurely collisions. Everywhere there are structures within structures... within structures. A Voyage Through Scales is an invitation to contemplate the earth's extraordinary variability, from changes in milliseconds to geologic time scales, from microns to the size of the planet. The range of scales in space, in time - in space-time - is truly mind boggling. Their complexity challenges our ability to measure, to model, to comprehend. Join us on this odyssey. Contents: Up into the Sky; Biogeosciences connecting Earth's spheres from microscopic to global scales; Scales in Atmospheric Remote Sensing Instruments; Beautiful Geometries Underlying Ocean Nonlinear Processes; Ocean Science; Soil: a journey through time and space; From microscopic ice crystals to global ice ages.