SEMAINE 1

Overview

What you will find in this class.

1 vidéo, 4 lectures

Vidéo: Video Introduction
Reading: Resources
Reading: Debriefing Quizzes
Reading: Explainer Assignments
Reading: A Supplemental Class to This One

SEMAINE 2

Heat, Light, and Energy

A primer on how to use units to describe numbers when describing temperature, energy, and light. Even if you don't plan on doing calculations yourself, understanding how units work will help to follow the rest of the lectures in the class. If you are interested in practicing your analysis skills, using units to guide calculations, there are some exercises in the Part II of this class.

6 vidéos, 2 quiz pour s'exercer

Vidéo: Using Units
Vidéo: Units of Energy
Vidéo: Heat
Practice Quiz: Optional Problems: How Much Coal to Run a Light Bulb
Practice Quiz: Optional Problems: Comparing Energy Prices
Vidéo: Units of Light
Vidéo: Light
Vidéo: Blackbody Radiation

Noté: What is heat and how can you warm up something in space?

SEMAINE 3

First Climate Model

The balance of energy flow, as incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared, allow us to create our first simple climate model, including a simple greenhouse effect. There are two extended exercises in Part II of this class, one an analytical (algebraic) model of the equilibrium temperature of a planet, the other a numerical model of how that temperature might evolve through time.

2 vidéos, 3 quiz pour s'exercer

Vidéo: Naked Planet Climate Model
Vidéo: The Greenhouse Effect
Practice Quiz: Optional Layer Model Problem: How Hot is the Moon?
Practice Quiz: Optional Layer Model Problem 2: A Stronger Greenhouse Effect
Practice Quiz: Optional Layer Model Problem 3: Nuclear Winter

Noté: Quiz 1

SEMAINE 4

Greenhouse Gases and the Atmosphere

The Layer Model above assumes that the pane of glass representing the atmosphere absorbs all of the infrared radiation that hits it and that it radiates at all infrared wavelengths. In other words, the layer model atmosphere is an infrared blackbody, but transparent in the visible. In reality, greenhouse gases are not "black" at all; they are very choosy about which frequencies of light they absorb and emit. This selective absorption of infrared light by greenhouse gases leads to the band saturation effect, which makes rare, trace gases like methane disproportionally powerful relative to higher-concentration gases like CO₂.

2 vidéos

Vidéo: Greenhouse Gas Physics
Vidéo: The Band Saturation Effect

Noté: Model Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere

SEMAINE 5

The Structure of the Atmosphere

The greenhouse effect works because the air in the upper atmosphere is colder than the ground, so that absorption and re-emission of IR by greenhouse gases decreases the amount of energy leaving the planet to space. Here we explore the physics responsible for keeping the upper atmosphere cold.

4 vidéos

Vidéo: Atmospheric Temperature Structure
Vidéo: Pressure in a Standing Fluid
Vidéo: Water Vapor and Latent Heat
Vidéo: Moist Convection

Noté: Model the Lapse Rate and Greenhouse Effect

SEMAINE 6

Weather and Climate

Another property of the real world, missing in our model so far, is that the real world is not everywhere the same temperature, and the heat fluxes to and from space do not necessarily balance at any given time or location. This is because the winds in the atmosphere and the currents in the ocean carry heat around, in general from the hot tropics up to the cold high latitudes.

4 vidéos

Vidéo: Heat Transport
Vidéo: Coriolis Acceleration
Vidéo: Geostrophic Motion
Vidéo: The Turbulent Cascade

Noté: Quiz 2

SEMAINE 7

Feedbacks

Feedbacks are loops of cause-and-effect that can either stabilize Earth's climate or amplify future climate changes. There is an exercise in Part II of this class where you solve for a planet's temperature by iteration, and in the process demonstrate a runaway ice albedo feedback that might have led to the Snowball Earth climate state 700 million years ago.

6 vidéos

Vidéo: Positive and Negative Feedback
Vidéo: Ice Albedo Feedback
Vidéo: Water Vapor Feedback
Vidéo: Clouds
Vidéo: Aerosols
Vidéo: Climate Sensitivity

Noté: Model Sunlight, Albedo, and Climate

Noté: Extract the Water Vapor Feedback from Climate Model Results

Noté: Model Clouds 1: IR

Noté: Model Clouds 2: Full-spectrum

Noté: Model Aerosols and Climate

Noté: Calculate the Climate Sensitivity

Noté: Quiz 3

Noté: What are positive and negative feedbacks?

SEMAINE 8

The Carbon Cycle

Now we shift gears in a major way — away from climate physics (you now have seen its main ingredients) to the emergent miracle that is the carbon cycle on Earth. Not only is carbon the chemical element of life, it is also the means of storing life's energy. We will look at how carbon cycles through the land, the oceans, and the deep earth, going in and out of the atmosphere -- and how that stabilizes the earth's climate.

9 vidéos

Vidéo: The Weathering CO₂ Thermostat
Vidéo: The Goldilocks Planets
Vidéo: The Oceans in the Carbon Cycle
Vidéo: The Land Biosphere in the Carbon Cycle
Vidéo: The Battery of the Biosphere
Vidéo: Oxidation and Reduction of Carbon
Vidéo: Coal
Vidéo: Oil
Vidéo: Natural Gas

Noté: Model the Global Carbon Cycle

Noté: Model Ocean/Land CO₂ Uptake with ISAM

Noté: Model Intended vs. Greenhouse Yields

Noté: Quiz 4

SEMAINE 9

The Perturbed Carbon Cycle

On the carbon locked up in fossil fuels and what happens when we burn those fuels. In Part II of this class, you can create a simple but somewhat realistic model of Earth's temperature evolution in the coming decades, in response to the release of CO2 (or in the sudden stop of emissions in a scenario called "The world without us").

7 vidéos

Vidéo: Forecasting Future Emissions
Vidéo: Where Our Carbon Is Going
Vidéo: Ocean Buffer Chemistry
Vidéo: The Perturbed Carbon Cycle
Vidéo: Methane as a Greenhouse Gas
Vidéo: The Long CO₂ Tail
Vidéo: Why the CO₂ Tail Matters

Noté: Model Hubbert's Peak

Noté: Model Kaya Identity

Noté: Fossilizing a Carbon Atom

Noté: Model Methane and Slugulator

Noté: Model the Long Tail

Noté: Quiz 5

Noté: Burning a Carbon Atom

SEMAINE 10

Looking for a Human Impact on Climate

You have now seen the ideas behind the forecast for a human impact on Earth's climate. The next question is: Do we see it happening today? It turns out that the "smoking gun" for a human impact on climate is the global average temperature record since about the 1970's. In order to interpret that temperature change, we need to consider it within the context of natural climate changes in Earth's geologic past.

10 vidéos

Vidéo: Land Surface Temperature Records
Vidéo: Sea Surface Temperature Records
Vidéo: Satellite Temperature Records
Vidéo: The Smoking Gun: Warming Since the 1970s
Vidéo: Paleoclimate and Proxy Measurements
Vidéo: Tree Rings
Vidéo: Borehole Temperatures
Vidéo: Oxygen Isotopes
Vidéo: Solar Intensity and the Hockey Stick
Vidéo: Glacial - Interglacial Cycles

Noté: Make Maps of Climate Models Warming

Noté: Look for the Smoking Gun

Noté: Browse the Global Glacier Length Data

Noté: Model Borehole Temperatures

Noté: Analyze Recent Solar Intensity Changes

Noté: Quiz 6

Noté: Is it Warming? Is It Us? How Do We Know?

SEMAINE 11

Potential Impacts

This unit we focus on the potential impacts of continued business-as-usual CO2 emissions. This is also the topic of the Working Group 2 volume of the IPCC reports (the Working Group 1 report is on the scientific basis, which is what we've been studying so far this course). You may find this material distressing, but hang on, because next week we'll go over "Mitigation", which is what it takes to avoid climate change (treated in the Working Group 3 report). Remember that most of the carbon we're worried about is still in the ground, so these impacts are inevitable only if we continue to decide to make them so. In Part II of this class, you can create a simple ice sheet model of your own.

12 vidéos

Vidéo: Global Weirding
Vidéo: Monsoons
Vidéo: Vegetation
Vidéo: Impacts of Sea Level
Vidéo: Antarctic Ice Sheet
Vidéo: Greenland Ice Sheet
Vidéo: Paleo Sea Level Changes
Vidéo: Water Vapor and Storminess
Vidéo: Hurricanes
Vidéo: Extreme Weather
Vidéo: Ecosystem Impacts
Vidéo: Human Impacts

Noté: Water Stress in Climate Model Results

Noté: Model Permafrost

Noté: Model Changes in Sea Level

Noté: Play with an Ice Sheet Model, ISM

Noté: Short vs Long Term Sea Level Change

Noté: Find the Increase in Low-Level Humidity in Models

Noté: Extract AR5 Model Lapse Rates

Noté: Model Hurricanes

Noté: Quiz 7

Noté: Global Weirding

SEMAINE 12

Mitigation

The last unit of the class finds us considering the options for avoiding, or "mitigating," a human impact on Earth's climate. Bottom line: I think it would be a challenge that humankind could beat if we decided to. If there hypothetically were no more coal on Earth, our potential to alter the climate would be much less. Finding energy sources in that world would not be an existential threat would just be a business opportunity. The hard part, in my opinion, is making that decision.

8 vidéos

Vidéo: Stabilization Scenarios
Vidéo: Temperature Targets
Vidéo: Slug Theory
Vidéo: Geoengineering: CO₂ Capture and Sequestration
Vidéo: Geoengineering: Solar Radiation Management
Vidéo: Economics of Climate Change
Vidéo: Mitigation: Short-Term
Vidéo: Mitigation: Long-Term

Noté: Model Stabilization Scenarios

Noté: Model Temperature Targets

Noté: How well does Slugulator do at Slug Theory?

Noté: Model CO2 Sequestration

Noté: Model SRM Geoengineering

Noté: How Many Wedges?

Noté: How Much Carbon-Free Energy by 2100?

Noté: Quiz 8

Noté: Is there Hope for the 11-year-old?

Noté: Term Project: Explore Climate Data and Models

Langue	English
Comment réussir	Réussissez tous les devoirs notés pour terminer le cours.
Notes des utilisateurs	4.6 étoiles Note moyenne des utilisateurs 4.6Voir ce que disent les étudiants

Global Warming I: The Science and Modeling of Climate Change

Global Warming I: The Science and Modeling of Climate Change