The Science of Climate Change

The course will provide answers to the following questions: How is the climate changing? Are human activities responsible for global warming? What future changes can we expect? What do we know for sure and what is the most uncertain?

Topics:

1. Introduction: Overview of the Climate System: atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, land surface; energy balance; Greenhouse effect; radiative forcing, climate change.

2. Physics of the Climate System: Fundamentals of the Atmosphere: chemical composition; compressibility and air pressure, thermal vertical stratification, global circulation. Fundamentals of the Ocean en Cryosphere: properties of water; oceans layered structure; oceans global circulation; hydrological cycle; atmosphere ocean interactions.

3. The Carbon Cycle: Reservoirs of carbon; the carbon cycle; acidification of the oceans; uncertainties in the carbon cycle

4. Climate System in Equilibrium: Global energy balance models of the Earth; consequences for the thermal structure of the atmosphere; radiative-convective equilibrium; geographical and seasonal variations in energy balance.

5. Climate Perturbations: Radiative forcing; natural vs anthropogenic forcings; main drivers of radiative forcing (CO2, other Greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use)

6. Climate Feedbacks: Principles of feedback mechanisms; main feedbacks in our climate feedback System: water vapor, clouds, albedo; tipping points.

7. Paleoclimate: Milankovitch theory and ice age; five million years of climate; the last one hundred thousand years of climate change.

8. Climate Change in the Anthropoceen: A century of observed warming; natural vs anthropogenic drivers; precipitation and droughts; storms, hurricanes and other extremes. Sea-level rise; Greeenland ice sheet; antarctic ice sheets; future sealevel rise.

9. Future Climate Model Predictions: What are climate models; history of climate modeling; what can and what cannot be predicate by climate models; are climate models are only tool for looking into the future.

10. Design of Climate Scenarios: Climate emission scenarios; uncertainty in emission scenarios; properties of climate change risk; from global to regional scenarios.