1

AUGUST 28

Introduction and getting back in the classroom
This class will address the goals and expectations of the course, and, after a summer off, review (perhaps for the first time) some of the fundamental aspects of the climate system that will be most relevant to the topic of climate change.

2

SEPTEMBER 4

Agents of change
In this class, we'll examine the basic causal mechanisms of climate variability and change. We'll start by looking at natural causes, focusing mostly on the short-term, as well as anthropogenic causes. At this stage we'll be looking mostly at large-scale modifiers; we'll focus more on local-scale modification later on.

3

SEPTEMBER 11

The climate to 1880
We'll begin this day by briefly looking at the methods by which we piece together past climates, with a focus on the recent past. We'll then look at the period up until 1880, what the climate record says, and what some of the documented impacts on past societies were.

4

SEPTEMBER 18

The climate since 1880
With the advent of modern technology, we have a lot more information about the more recent climate, not only of land temperature and precipitation, but ocean temperatures, upper atmosphere temperatures, sea ice, atmospheric composition, and much more. We will spend this class trying to make sense of all the records and what they're telling us.

5

SEPTEMBER 25

Movie day
TBA

6

OCTOBER 2

Debate 1
"Has anthropogenic climate change already begun?"

7

OCTOBER 9

Abrupt climate change
It's only in the past decade or so that the concept of an 'abrupt' or non-linear climate change has been taken seriously. We'll look at abrupt changes in the past, and potential triggers of future abrupt changes.

8

OCTOBER 16

Local climate change
Sometimes lost within the whole topic of climate change is the local scale; everyone has heard of the urban heat island but local change goes way beyond that, including effects of irrigation, deforestation, and other land use changes. We'll explore these and their effects on the local and regional scales.

9

OCTOBER 23

Climate modeling
One of the keys in understanding climate predictions for the future is understanding general circulation models, and what they do well, what they do less well, and what they cannot do. We'll also discuss how future projections are made, including the IPCC "scenarios", and the general consensus of future climate predictions.

10

OCTOBER 30

Adaptation and mitigation options
The response to potential climate change has tended to oscillate between adapting and mitigating, although much more recently focus has shifted to accomodate both of these concepts. We'll discuss what both adaptation and mitigation mean, and the potential options.

11

NOVEMBER 6

Policy considerations
This class period could easily be a course in its own right. We'll tackle the history of the climate change 'regime', international and domestic politics, and try to make sense of the current state of negotiations and treaties as they presently stand.

12

NOVEMBER 13

Debate 2
"Should the United States implement a greenhouse-gas cap-and-trade system?"

13

NOVEMBER 20

Impacts 1
Topics TBA

14

DECEMBER 4

Impacts 2
Topics TBA

-

DECEMBER 11

Final exam is due