SEMANA 1

Overview

What you will find in this class.

1 vídeo, 4 leituras

Vídeo: Video Introduction
阅读: Resources
阅读: Debriefing Quizzes
阅读: Explainer Assignments
阅读: A Supplemental Class to This One

SEMANA 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 vídeos, 2 questionários de prática

Vídeo: Using Units
Vídeo: Units of Energy
Vídeo: Heat
练习测验: Optional Problems: How Much Coal to Run a Light Bulb
练习测验: Optional Problems: Comparing Energy Prices
Vídeo: Units of Light
Vídeo: Light
Vídeo: Blackbody Radiation

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

SEMANA 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 vídeos, 3 questionários de prática

Vídeo: Naked Planet Climate Model
Vídeo: The Greenhouse Effect
练习测验: Optional Layer Model Problem: How Hot is the Moon?
练习测验: Optional Layer Model Problem 2: A Stronger Greenhouse Effect
练习测验: Optional Layer Model Problem 3: Nuclear Winter

Nota atribuída: Quiz 1

SEMANA 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 vídeos

Vídeo: Greenhouse Gas Physics
Vídeo: The Band Saturation Effect

Nota atribuída: Model Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Model the Lapse Rate and Greenhouse Effect

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Quiz 2

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Model Sunlight, Albedo, and Climate

Nota atribuída: Extract the Water Vapor Feedback from Climate Model Results

Nota atribuída: Model Clouds 1: IR

Nota atribuída: Model Clouds 2: Full-spectrum

Nota atribuída: Model Aerosols and Climate

Nota atribuída: Calculate the Climate Sensitivity

Nota atribuída: Quiz 3

Nota atribuída: What are positive and negative feedbacks?

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Model the Global Carbon Cycle

Nota atribuída: Model Ocean/Land CO₂ Uptake with ISAM

Nota atribuída: Model Intended vs. Greenhouse Yields

Nota atribuída: Quiz 4

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Model Hubbert's Peak

Nota atribuída: Model Kaya Identity

Nota atribuída: Fossilizing a Carbon Atom

Nota atribuída: Model Methane and Slugulator

Nota atribuída: Model the Long Tail

Nota atribuída: Quiz 5

Nota atribuída: Burning a Carbon Atom

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Make Maps of Climate Models Warming

Nota atribuída: Look for the Smoking Gun

Nota atribuída: Browse the Global Glacier Length Data

Nota atribuída: Model Borehole Temperatures

Nota atribuída: Analyze Recent Solar Intensity Changes

Nota atribuída: Quiz 6

Nota atribuída: Is it Warming? Is It Us? How Do We Know?

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Water Stress in Climate Model Results

Nota atribuída: Model Permafrost

Nota atribuída: Model Changes in Sea Level

Nota atribuída: Play with an Ice Sheet Model, ISM

Nota atribuída: Short vs Long Term Sea Level Change

Nota atribuída: Find the Increase in Low-Level Humidity in Models

Nota atribuída: Extract AR5 Model Lapse Rates

Nota atribuída: Model Hurricanes

Nota atribuída: Quiz 7

Nota atribuída: Global Weirding

SEMANA 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 vídeos

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

Nota atribuída: Model Stabilization Scenarios

Nota atribuída: Model Temperature Targets

Nota atribuída: How well does Slugulator do at Slug Theory?

Nota atribuída: Model CO2 Sequestration

Nota atribuída: Model SRM Geoengineering

Nota atribuída: How Many Wedges?

Nota atribuída: How Much Carbon-Free Energy by 2100?

Nota atribuída: Quiz 8

Nota atribuída: Is there Hope for the 11-year-old?

Nota atribuída: Term Project: Explore Climate Data and Models

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Aquecimento global I: A ciência da modelagem das mudanças climáticas

Aquecimento global I: A ciência da modelagem das mudanças climáticas