Revealing the current and future significance of environmental and climatic change, this study outlines the conceptual framework for studies by posing key questions and presenting the most recent relevant research. It provides a basic introduction to models in environmental change research and to the study of past environmental changes. Covering the last 400, 000 years, special emphasis is placed on periods of rapid warming, the nature of climatic variability over the last 1000 years and the dramatic and accelerating changes in the Earth system heralded by the industrial revolution.