НЕДЕЛЯ 1

Overview

What you will find in this class.

1 видео, 4 материалов для самостоятельного изучения

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

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео, 2 practice quizzes

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

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

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео, 3 practice quizzes

Видео: Naked Planet Climate Model
Видео: 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

Оцениваемый: Quiz 1

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

Видео: Greenhouse Gas Physics
Видео: The Band Saturation Effect

Оцениваемый: Model Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Model the Lapse Rate and Greenhouse Effect

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Quiz 2

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Model Sunlight, Albedo, and Climate

Оцениваемый: Extract the Water Vapor Feedback from Climate Model Results

Оцениваемый: Model Clouds 1: IR

Оцениваемый: Model Clouds 2: Full-spectrum

Оцениваемый: Model Aerosols and Climate

Оцениваемый: Calculate the Climate Sensitivity

Оцениваемый: Quiz 3

Оцениваемый: What are positive and negative feedbacks?

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Model the Global Carbon Cycle

Оцениваемый: Model Ocean/Land CO₂ Uptake with ISAM

Оцениваемый: Model Intended vs. Greenhouse Yields

Оцениваемый: Quiz 4

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Model Hubbert's Peak

Оцениваемый: Model Kaya Identity

Оцениваемый: Fossilizing a Carbon Atom

Оцениваемый: Model Methane and Slugulator

Оцениваемый: Model the Long Tail

Оцениваемый: Quiz 5

Оцениваемый: Burning a Carbon Atom

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Make Maps of Climate Models Warming

Оцениваемый: Look for the Smoking Gun

Оцениваемый: Browse the Global Glacier Length Data

Оцениваемый: Model Borehole Temperatures

Оцениваемый: Analyze Recent Solar Intensity Changes

Оцениваемый: Quiz 6

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

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Water Stress in Climate Model Results

Оцениваемый: Model Permafrost

Оцениваемый: Model Changes in Sea Level

Оцениваемый: Play with an Ice Sheet Model, ISM

Оцениваемый: Short vs Long Term Sea Level Change

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

Оцениваемый: Extract AR5 Model Lapse Rates

Оцениваемый: Model Hurricanes

Оцениваемый: Quiz 7

Оцениваемый: Global Weirding

НЕДЕЛЯ 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 видео

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

Оцениваемый: Model Stabilization Scenarios

Оцениваемый: Model Temperature Targets

Оцениваемый: How well does Slugulator do at Slug Theory?

Оцениваемый: Model CO2 Sequestration

Оцениваемый: Model SRM Geoengineering

Оцениваемый: How Many Wedges?

Оцениваемый: How Much Carbon-Free Energy by 2100?

Оцениваемый: Quiz 8

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

Оцениваемый: Term Project: Explore Climate Data and Models

Язык	English
Как пройти курс	Чтобы пройти курс, выполните все оцениваемые задания.
Оценки пользователей	4.6 звезды Средняя оценка пользователей: 4.6Посмотрите, что пишут учащиеся

Global Warming I: The Science and Modeling of Climate Change

Global Warming I: The Science and Modeling of Climate Change