This course focuses on the scientific background of the present-day climate crisis, often also called Global Warming. The course will give you the scientific knowledge and tools needed to understand the crisis, including the many uncertainties behind the science. What do we really know with great certainty, and what is less certain? Can we still act given the uncertainty in the science behind the climate crisis?
After a short introduction to global warming, we will go back in time and put the present changes occurring today in context, by looking back in time to the ice ages that have occurred on our planet over the past million years.
Are the changes happening today really that unusual? Have similar changes occurred in the past? We will then focus our weekly discussions on key aspects of the climate system to better understand the complexity of our climate. We will take a journey to our Sun, the source of all our energy in the climate system. Can the changes in our Sun explain the recent global warming? We will discuss the Energy Balance of our planet resulting from the balance between the energy we get from the Sun, and the energy lost from the Earth by cooling. We will learn about the water cycle and the important role of clouds and rain in the climate system. How do clouds impact the Earth’s temperature? We will discuss atmospheric circulation patterns, winds and storms.
Then we will dive down into the oceans that cover 70% of the planet to understand how the oceans impact our climate. We will visit the frozen parts of the Earth (the cryosphere), and the vegetated parts of our planet (the biosphere). How does the cryosphere impact sea level rise in the future? How does the biosphere impact carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? We will take a trip to a volcano to understand how large volcanic eruptions can also impact the Earth’s temperature. Could we produce an artificial volcano to offset global warming?
After studying all the different important components of the climate system, we will learn how computer models put all this information together to estimate what may happen to our global and regional climates in 2050 or 2100. What are the various scenarios for the future? How accurate are these forecasts? And towards the end of the course, we will talk about what can be done to deal with the climate crisis. It is not all bad news. There are some very exciting solutions out there.
