Polar environments and global change, by Roger Barry and Eileen Hall-McKim. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 418 pp. $150.00 (hard cover). ISBN: 978-1-108-42316-8.

I should note at the outset that Roger Barry and I knew each other from our joint McGill University days in the late 1950s and later at the University of Colorado, and Eileen Hall-McKim took my Glacial Geology class some time in the past. Thus, this review is not unbiased. The book was completed a few months after Roger’s death and thus serves as a significant contribution to his long and distinguished career. As stated in the Preface, the aim of the book is “to assemble the diverse information on polar environmental change for the benefit of students in environmental sciences, geography, biology, and climate sciences, as well as planners and northern residents.” One should add to this list paleoclimatologists and paleoceanographers.

The volume is encyclopedic in its coverage and thus I have found myself, hardly a “student” (in age at least), dipping into it for information. As might be expected from the title, the volume includes information about the Arctic and Antarctic, but it also breaks with tradition to include material on the so-called Third Pole (chapter 8); namely, the high plateau and mountains of Central Asia.

The volume is organized into nine chapters, each with an extensive list of references and often also with an extensive series of graphs, maps, and tables. One refreshing aspect of the references is the recognition that there was indeed life (i.e., publications) prior to approximately AD 2000. This will provide the student reader some historical context to the evolution of both data and thought prior to our current paradigms. A seven-page index at the end of the book provides readers access to a specific page or section, such as: Neoglacial, p. 47. Examples of chapter headings include “2. Paleoclimate History” and “6. Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves,” ending with “9. Future Environments in the Polar Regions.” The volume effectively covers where we have been, where we are today, and where might we be in the future in terms of the environmental histories on these complex and varied landscapes and oceans that constitute our current day polar environments. It will serve as a significant contribution to Roger Barry’s legacy of his many contributions to polar climatology and paleoclimatology. This book can serve as the textbook for a senior-level course on polar environments, and it will be an invaluable source of information for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses.