An overview of optical scattering in the atmosphere includes the sizes and concentration of scatterers, the mathematical formalism of scattering, and definitions of the lidar scattering and extinction coefficients. The Rayleigh, Mie, and geometric scattering regimes are defined by the scattering parameter, and implications of Rayleigh scattering on lidar measurements are elucidated for both signals and background. Molecules store energy in translational, rotational, and vibrational motions, and atoms store energy in electronic excitations. These energy storage mechanisms cause the lidar observables of Doppler shifts, molecular and Raman spectra, and atomic spectra, which, along with Rayleigh scattering, enable lidar measurements of temperatures and winds; water vapor and trace gas concentrations; and aerosol extinction coefficients at altitudes from the surface up to the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The lidar techniques that exploit all these phenomena operate over a range of wavelengths from the long wave infrared to the ultraviolet and the reasons for the differing wavelengths of the various techniques are explained with a graphic that summarizes the chapter.

A brief overview and description of the atmospheric lidar measurement technique is followed by the structure of the atmosphere in terms of the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere, as it is usually presented in atmospheric science and meteorology. The atmosphere is then described in terms of lidar observables at all altitudes, including water vapor; trace gases; clouds; several other kinds of particulate matter; and metal atoms, as well as density, temperature, and winds. Examples of lidar measurements include tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, greenhouse gases, other pollutants, tropospheric and stratospheric aerosols, polar stratospheric clouds, and atoms of sodium, potassium, calcium, and iron in the mesosphere. Finally, the structure and contents of the book are described, and suggestions for further reading are given.

This chapter reviews how literary and literal atmospheres have cut across each other in complex transactions of meaning and practice over the past 400 years. It traces how atmosphere was first literalised in early modern science, in a process that identified air as a new object of empirical knowledge while also awarding a new meaning of empirical objectivity to literalness. It then shows how this scientifically literal atmosphere was taken up in an expanded set of metaphoric and figurative uses from around 1800, in which such formulations as ‘political atmosphere’ and ‘poetic atmosphere’ breathed new life into traditional understandings of air that had moved fluidly between the spiritual and the empirical. The large-scale cultural re-metaphoricisation of air in this period formed the platform for the emergence of literary atmosphere as a specific practice of double troping, in which aerial figures were reflexively marked as at once figurative and literal. That marking proved integral to the emergence of both modernist poetry and the modern novel. But the discursive divisions and oppositions that underwrote it are brought under unprecedented pressure by climate change, which therefore requires new methods for the writing and reading of literary atmospheres.

This is our quick jog through climate science, intended to ground future climate discussions in a solid factual context. We review: the earth’s energy budget via the Trenberth diagram; the role of greenhouse gases, the Keeling Curve, and global warming potential; atmospheric structure and the environmental lapse rate; global atmospheric and oceanic circulations; paleoclimatology over both the last million and the last 1,500 years; and the role of oceans and ice.

The Anthropocene tasks literary critics and historians with rethinking literature through the lens of a civilizational catastrophe not yet fully realized but well-modeled and forecast in the IPCC reports, which describe a future planet drastically altered by greenhouse gas emissions. The hidden angle of literature is that it has always subtended a long arc from a mostly stable climate regime to the chaotic one that awaits above 400-plus ppm. Within literary texts we may find clues to explain how, in the face of a planetary emergency, we persist in our frustrating denialism (and find, too, perhaps some remedies for it). The American Renaissance is an important locus for such rereadings. This essay takes an indirect line through the central figures associated with the period (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Hawthorne), adding Dickinson, Poe, Fuller, and Susan Fenimore Cooper. The remarks on these authors’ “climate-imaginary” are mostly observational, sometimes notional, and admittedly provisional. Uncovering the climatic unconscious of the American Renaissance can only be understood as a literary version of paleoclimatology, with all the attendant gaps and uncertainties.

Craftsmanship, making and do-it-ocracy are prominent elements of the so-called new world of work. In this chapter, we describe the ‘experience of making’ in two makerspaces, one located in France and the other in the United States. In particular, we focus on three concepts – silence, atmosphere and togetherness – in order to flesh out, or make visible, the specificities of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and Do-It-Together (DIT) processes in makerspaces. We mobilise Merleau-Ponty’s work and an aesthetic perspective on time and place to delve into the experience of making. This leads us to propose the concept of New Collaborative Experiences (NCE), which we define as new modes of feeling and expressing the self and the world in a context that requires a collective production and coordination, as a way of illuminating our two ethnographic accounts.

The last part of Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3 of De mundo (392a31–393a8) describe the cosmic layers further below the sphere of the moon, leading down to the very centre of the universe. This section provides a brief overview of the sublunary layers of the four elements (fire, air, water and earth), some of which will be discussed in more detail later in the text. The two main theses that constitute the reasoning behind this section are (i) continuity throughout the entire cosmos and (ii) the great variety of phenomena and processes within the sublunary domain. The layers are organised from the most active one at the top down to the most passive one at the centre of the universe. The continuity among the layers is demonstrated on each and every level. There is, however, no suggestion that each lower, less active substance gains all its characteristics from the more active substance above. For our author’s purpose it is sufficient to demonstrate that there is some relation, some communication among the layers which can later be used by the divine dunamis permeating the entire cosmos. The final part of the present section concerns the claim that the continents are large islands surrounded by an ocean.

Chapter 2: This chapter begins by observing that the repertoire of science plays is dominated by works in which scientific issues are the subject of the drama, rather than a mode of exploration, in symbiotic relationship with those of the theatre itself. This kind of symbiosis can occur only if the collaborative process is set up at the outset, so that the script evolves in concert with all aspects of staging and enactment – a method pioneered by Theatre de Complicité, under the direction of its founder Simon McBurney. Taking as a case study McBurney’s stage adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s novel Beware of Pity, the chapter explores the question of how consciousness might be staged, rather than talked about. Central to the experiment is the process of working with metaphor, both as literary conceit and as an approach to theatrical realization.

Here, I consider other factors than distance from a star that may affect a planet’s habitability. These include its atmosphere, its magnetic field, and whether it has any moons. However, I emphasize that it is important not to draw up a list of all the Earth’s specific features, for example its unusually large Moon (which helps to stabilize its axial tilt) and make the assumption that all of these are necessary for another planet to support life. Making such an assumption leads to the Rare Earth hypothesis, which I regard as flawed. For life to originate on a planet, there must be places where conditions favour the biochemical evolution that leads to proto-cells and hence to life. For life to continue and diversify, there must be places where organisms can survive. Even if conditions are normally benign, all planets are subject to occasional major threats, such as impacts and glaciations. I examine the mass extinctions on our own planet, some of which were caused by asteroids impacting our surface. Finally, I examine a problem that Earth is not subject to – tidal locking. This may be a major problem for planets in the habitable zones of red dwarfs.

Here, I examine whether some of the exoplanets that we have already discovered might be inhabited. However, I start by cautioning against an overly optimistic stance. Although we now know of thousands of exoplanets, and although the Drake equation estimates of Chapter 12 suggest that millions of planets are inhabited, a quick calculation suggests that of the exoplanets discovered so far, only a few are likely to have microbial life and none to have animal life. Against that background, we look at four planetary systems that are reasonably promising. One of these is the Kepler-186 system, where planet f may be habitable. Another is the Alpha Centauri system, where Proxima b may be habitable. A third is TRAPPIST-1, where there are three potentially habitable planets. The final one is Kepler-452, where planet b may be habitable. Whether any of these planets are actually inhabited will only be answered by particular kinds of observation – most likely spectroscopic studies of their atmospheres. How realistic such studies are depends on the distance to the system concerned. The four systems used as examples here range from 4 to nearly 2000 light years – from doable to quasi-impossible.

Chapter 2 follows the coal extracted from the countryside of rural England to arrive in the humming, phosphorescent, non-stop pulsation of the metropolis. Virginia Woolf’s argument for a writer’s need to control her own rest and living space in A Room of One’s Own provides a basis for analyzing how social action determines the built environment. In order to articulate the growing relation between industrial “exhaust” and physical “exhaustion,” the chapter turns to a discussion of “atmosphere” in James Joyce’s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. Surveying the trajectory of environmental groups such as the Smoke Abatement League of Great Britain, I consider both the benefits and limitations to the primarily visual aesthetics that surrounded discussions of pollution. The rise of gasworks to create “clean,” smokeless fuels removed soot from the air but often poisoned workers and waterways. I outline a modernist aesthetics of atmosphere that is not primarily visual but proprioceptive. Atmosphere in its local and global, visible and invisible manifestations reveals the subtle interactions between personal and public spaces in the metropolis.

The near-infrared reflectance spectra of Pluto and its satellites are rich with diagnostic absorption bands of ices of CH4, N2, CO, H2O, and an incompletely identified ammonia-bearing molecule. Following years of investigation of the spectra of Pluto and Charon with ground-based telescopes, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft obtained spectral maps of these bodies and three small satellites on its passage through the system on July 14, 2015, showing the distribution of these ices, as well as a colored, non-ice component. Spectral modeling mapped the distribution of the various ices and showed their abundance and mixing details in relationship to regions of differing surface elevation, albedo, and geologic structure. Additionally, owing to their greatly different degrees of volatility, the ices of Pluto are distributed in patterns responsive to Pluto’s climatic changes on both short and long terms. The surface of Charon is dominated spectrally by H2O ice with one or more ammoniated compounds, and three of the four very small satellites show both H2O ice and the ammonia signature.