1. Logistics, course requirements; overview of the course and an introductory Jupyter notebook with python basics.
2. The greenhouse effect
   1. Energy balance, the greenhouse effect in a two-layer model.
   2. Emission height, atmospheric lapse rate, response to greenhouse gas increase.
   3. Black body radiation.
   4. What are greenhouse gases and how do they absorb radiation:
      • Vibrational and rotational modes.
      • Energy levels, absorption lines, absorption windows.
      • Pressure and Doppler broadening.
      • Different greenhouse gases compared via their Greenhouse Warming Potential.
   5. Water vapor feedback to increased CO₂.
3. Temperature
   1. Equilibrium climate sensitivity.
   2. Transient climate sensitivity and the role of the ocean.
   3. Polar amplification.
   4. Natural variability and “hiatus” periods.
   5. Stratospheric cooling.
4. Sea level rise
   1. The historical record and future projections:
      • Exiting from the little ice age vs anthropogenic global warming.
      • Decadal variability.
      • Global vs regional.
      • Future projections.
   2. Global mean sea level change:
      • Thermal expansion.
      • Glacier and ice sheet mass balance.
      • Land water storage.
   3. Regional sea level change:
      • Wind stress.
      • Atmospheric sea level pressure.
      • Ocean circulation.
      • Land erosion.
      • Gravitational effects.
5. Clouds
   1. Cloud types: high/ low, water/ ice.
   2. Shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) cloud radiative forcing (CRF).
   3. How clouds form, atmospheric convection.
   4. Cloud microphysics: fall speed of cloud droplets, cloud dissipation, droplet size distribution, hygrometer types, aerosols.
   5. Cloud feedbacks and warming uncertainty.
6. Ocean acidification
   1. The ocean carbonate system.
   2. Alkalinity, total CO₂, pH.
   3. The effect of increasing atmospheric CO₂ on ocean acidity and on calcium carbonate dissolution.
   4. Long-term decline of anthropogenic CO₂
7. Ocean circulation collapse
   1. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
   2. Ocean temperature, salinity, density.
   3. Multiple equilibria, stability, tipping points, hysteresis.
   4. Consequences of meridional circulation collapse
   5. Observations, has the ocean circulation started collapsing? Projections.
8. Hurricanes
   1. The big factors: Sea Surface Temperature (SST), wind shear.
   2. Have hurricanes become stronger already: correlation with SST.
   3. Potential intensity: Clausius-Clapeyron relation, hurricane energetics and future intensification.
9. A special course session on critically reading popular press articles about climate change, first class after spring break. The individual and group assignments in this case are due before class, see guidelines for several different options for this class here.
10. Arctic sea ice
    1. Recent changes to Arctic ice extent, area, volume, and age.
    2. Why do these changes occur, and what is the impact.
    3. sea-ice feedbacks: albedo, age and melt ponds, thickness and insulation, thickness and mobility due to storms.
    4. Detection of climate change.
    5. Future projections.
11. Greenland and Antarctica
    1. Observed changes to Greenland and Antarctica.
    2. Surface Mass balance (SMB): Ablation vs accumulation, positive degree days (PDD).
    3. SMB as a function of height: elevation-desert effect; lapse rate and reduced ablation; temperature precipitation feedback.
    4. Calving: yield stress, floating criteria, hydro-fracturing in ice shelves.
    5. Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI).
    6. Basal heat budget and meltwater production.
    7. Ice streams acceleration, lubrication by basal water, melt ponds and Moulins.
    8. Ice ages
    9. Observations of current trends and future projections.
12. Mountain glaciers
    1. Observed retreat over the past 150 years, acceleration in recent decades.
    2. Surface mass balance, equilibrium line, accumulation and ablation zones.
    3. Glaciers as climate proxies: ice cores and glacier length records.
    4. Glacier ice flow and retreat due to warming and changes in surface mass balance.
    5. Retreat due to exit from little ice age vs anthropogenic climate change.
13. Droughts and Floods (two separate lectures)
    1. Precipitation, evaporation and soil moisture.
    2. Droughts driven by remote SST changes due to natural variability modes such as El Niño or the Indian Ocean dipole.
    3. Reconstructing past droughts, tree rings, and the detection of anthropogenic climate change.
    4. Future projections: two case studies, Sahel and South-West US.
    5. Understanding precipitation projections:
       1. The "wet getting wetter, dry getting drier" global-scale projection.
       2. Expansion of the Hadley cell and shift of desert bands.
       3. Strengthening of extreme precipitation events.
    6. Bucket model for soil moisture.
14. Heatwaves
    1. Heat waves as weather events, location-specific threshold temperature and duration.
    2. Processes: high pressure aloft, subsidence, surface winds, clear sky and enhanced shortwave radiation, dry soil, heat stress.
    3. Heat stress and human health effects
    4. Projections: anticipated changes to amplitude, frequency, duration and the total number of heatwave days.
    5. Understanding the projected shift in heatwave statistics.
15. Forest fires
    1. Fuel aridity and fire weather indices.
    2. Non-climate human influences: ignition, fuel and fire suppression management, population increases.
    3. Climate factors: drought, temperature, prior-year cold season precipitation, winds, vapor pressure deficit.
    4. Fires enhanced by climate variability modes and teleconnections vs by climate change.
    5. Test cases: south-western US and Australia.
16. Last class: using (or ignoring) climate science in setting policy. The individual and group assignments in this case are due before class, see guidelines for several different options for this class here.

1. Introduction
2. Hurricanes
3. The greenhouse effect
4. Sea level
5. Clouds
6. Temperature
7. Ocean acidification or Ocean circulation
8. Critically reading popular press articles about climate change
9. Droughts, Floods or Heat waves
10. Arctic sea ice
11. Greenland/Antarctica or Mountain glaciers
12. Forest fires
13. Last class! (mis)using climate science in setting policy

Elementary college-level calculus and ordinary differential equations. Some very basic programming experience is assumed (not necessarily in python). The course will introduce the students to various science subjects, but no prior college-level science knowledge is assumed.

Students must attend all classes. Each participant should complete the weekly Jupyter-notebook workshop and write a one-page report addressed to the president science adviser, explaining the problem, motivation, methods, the science results based on the workshop outcome and the implications. See link to detailed writing guidelines below. Each student will serve as a “coach” in at least one in-class workshop, helping other students after being prepared by the teaching staff the week before. Each group of coaches will also prepare a two-slide presentation for a special course session on critically reading popular press articles about climate change, and another such presentation for the last class on the interface between climate change science and policy. Grading: weekly HW, including group presentations: 75% (lowest non-presentation grade dropped); coaching: 10%, participation: 15%.

See more here

• Course modules  • Textbook