Book excerpt: Twenty-four papers assess the challenges to developing a systematic framework for understanding and predicting climatic changes and variations. The contributing scientists pull together ad hoc environmental observations, presenting a coherent review of long and short term climate monitoring, direction in future research, and specific aspects of observing such as long term monitoring of the cryosphere, and oceanic observation systems. The volume is reprinted from Climatic Change, v.31, nos.2-4, 1995. Lacks an index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR