Heliophysics is a developing scientific discipline integrating studies of the Sun's variability, the surrounding heliosphere, and climatic environments. Over the past few centuries, our understanding of how the Sun drives space weather and climate on the Earth and other planets has advanced at an ever-increasing rate. This volume, the first in a series of three heliophysics texts, integrates such diverse topics for the first time as a coherent intellectual discipline. It emphasizes the physical processes coupling the Sun and Earth, allowing insights into the interaction of the solar wind and radiation with the Earth's magnetic field, atmosphere and climate system. It provides a core resource for advanced undergraduates and graduates, and also constitutes a foundational reference for researchers in heliophysics, astrophysics, plasma physics, space physics, solar physics, aeronomy, space weather, planetary science and climate science. Additional online resources, including lecture presentations and other teaching materials, are accessible at www.cambridge.org/9780521110617. Other volumes in this series: Heliophysics: Space Storms and Radiation: Causes and Effects (Volume II) Heliophysics: Evolving Solar Activity and the Climates of Space and Earth (Volume III)