Assignments
& Exams
Links to the assignments will be posted
below one week before they are due. The assignments are due in class
at 10:30 am on the day indicated. Late assignments will not be accepted
without advance arrangement. The dates for the two mid-terms and
the final exam are listed below. Solutions to assignments and exams
will be
posted below as well.
| Assignment #1 |
due Wednesday, April 4 |
|
| Assignment #2 |
due Wednesday, April 11 |
|
| Midterm #1 |
Monday, April 16 |
|
| Student presentations |
Week 6, April 30 - May 4 |
|
| Project write-up |
due Monday, May 7 |
|
| Assignment #3 |
Wednesday, May 9 |
|
| Midterm #2 |
Tuesday, May 15 |
|
| Assignment #4 |
Thursday, May 24 |
|
| Assignment #5 |
Thursday, May 31 |
|
| Final Exam |
Monday, June 4 8:30-10:20 am |
|
Extra Credit
There will be a number of extra credit opportunities during the course
of the quarter. Some will be in the form of extra credit questions on homework
assignments and exams, others will be based on attending a seminar related
to Climate and climate change, and writing a short paragraph describing
what the seminar was about. You can get up to 20 points for each
seminar you attend (with a maximum of 2 seminars that you will get extra
credit for). Here is a list of seminars that you might find interesting:
-
Thursday May 3, 12:30 pm, Ocean Sciences Building, room 425, Dr. Michael
Mann "Climate of the last millennium".
-
Thursday May 3, 3:30 pm, ATG 310 (our usual classroom in the atmospheric
sciences building), Dr. David Catling "Evolution of the Earth's early
atmosphere: the rise of oxygen, the importance of methane and the occurrence
of 'snowball Earth'"
-
Wednesday May 16, 7:00 pm, Kane Hall, room 210, Dr. Richard Alley "The
uncertain future: climate, ice, and our changing world"
Required
Reading
The table below lists the Chapters you
are required to read for each week. The Reader's guide to the text
outlines the important points in each Chapter.
Reader's Guide to the
Text
Chapter 1 - Global
Change
Introduces all the topics
covered in the course. Accurately reflects the content and level of difficulty
of the course. It will be useful to reread this chapter when studying for
the final. The Summary, Key Terms, Review Problems and Critical Thinking
Problems at the end of this and all chapters will help you assess what
you've learned. We've incorporated some of this material into the assignments
and exams.
Chapter 2 - Daisyworld:
An introduction to Systems
An introduction to systems
and feedbacks. This chapter is, in some ways, the most difficult in the
book, because it's about concepts. Learning the graphing conventions in
Figs. 2-1 and 2-2 is optional: some students find it helpful: others don't.
The important thing is to grasp the idea behind the figures and be able
to express it in a way that makes sense to you. You can skip the section
"Response of Equilibrium States to Forcing".
Chapter 3 - Global
Energy Balance: The Greenhouse Effect
Don't worry about the frequency
of radiation or about photons and photon energy. There are two equations
in this chapter that you'll be required to learn and apply in simple problems:
the inverse square law (p. 38) and the Stefan Boltzmann Law (p. 41). The
planetary energy balance (p. 41-42) is fundamental material that we'll
come back to again and again in the course. The same is true of the section
on the greenhouse effect. You can just skim the section entitled "Physical
Causes of the Greenhouse Effect", which gets a bit too deeply involved
in the physics of radiation, but being able to understand the diagram Fig.
3-13 is really important.
Note that colored figures
like Fig. 3-3 are repeated in the center section of the book.
Chapter 4 - The
Atmospheric Circulation System
This chapter is not as well
written the other chapters in the book so we've supplemented it with lecture
notes that can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate dates in the
lecture schedule. The figures (many of which are repeated in the center
section of the book, are helpful and informative.
Skip the subsections entitled
"The Movement of Air" and "The General Circulation" and the box entitled
"The Relationship among Temperature...". All you'll need to know about
this material is in the lecture notes. The intermediate section "The Driving
Force, The Global Energy Distribution, which contains Figs 4.3 and 4.4
is important. The section "The Coriolis Force" is well written but difficult.
In class we'll simply describe what the Coriolis force does, but we won't
try to explain why it does what it does. Read carefully the sections entitled
"The Distribution of Surface Winds","Seasonal Variability", and "Global
Distributions of Temperature and Rainfall."
Chapters 5, 6 -
The Circulation of the Oceans & Circulation of the Solid Earth
You won't need to learn
this material in detail but these chapters are well worth skimming. Most
of the discussion of the ocean circulation (p. 82-88) is too difficult.
A knowledge of the basic concepts of plate tectonics (Chapter 6 p. 106-116;
) will enhance your appreciation of the material on climatic variations
on the 100-million year time scale, covered later in the book.
Chapter 7 - Recycling
of the Elements: The Carbon Cycle
The textbook co-author,
James Kasting, is one of the leading authorities on the carbon cycle. This
chapter contains fundamental material that needs to be read carefully.
Figs. 7-7 and 7-12 are too detailed: we'll present simpler versions in
class. You can skip the box on the pH scale and the chemical equations
on p. 146. Try the review questions at the end of the Chapter.
Chapter 8 - Long-Term
Climate Regulation
Outlines the origin and
history of the earth and its atmosphere. The first of a series of five
chapters dealing with the history of climate. Contains mostly factual material
that can be read and assimilated much more quickly than the conceptual
ideas about geochemical cycles presented in Chapter 7. The material on
the formation of the solar system is optional. No need to memorize the
terms in Fig. 8-11.
Chapter 9 - The
Chemical Environment: Evolution of the Atmosphere
This Chapter on the history
of the atmosphere focuses on oxygen and ozone in the earth's atmosphere
and their connection with life. It is concerned with the timing of the
rise of oxygen and the development of the ozone layer which protects life
on earth from the harmful effects of the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Much
of the discussion is concerned with the evidence concerning the history
of oxygen levels in the atmosphere and with the mechanisms believed to
have played a role in controlling it. Not all the questions raised at the
beginning of the chapter have been answered. The reading assignment is
designed summarize what we know and how we know it and to give students
some appreciation for the remaining controversies. Much of the chapter
can be skimmed lightly or skipped without losing the main ideas.
Read "Key Questions", "Chapter
Overview", "Introduction", The "Prebiotic Atmosphere". It's OK to skip
"The Origin of Life" and "Effect of Life on the Early Atmosphere". Skim
"The Rise of Oxygen: Geological Evidence" just to get Read "The Rise of
Ozone" carefully. Fig. 9-12 is important. Skim "Possible Causes of the
Rise of Oxygen" taking note of the final conclusion. Read "Modern Controls
on atmospheric O2: Forest Fires and Atmospheric Oxygen", but it's OK to
skip the remainder of this section.
Chapter 10 - Biodiversity
through Earth History
The title of this chapter
is a bit misleading. Most of it is about climate and earth history of the
past 100-million years. Read from p. 201: "The Cretacious-Tertiary Mass
Extinction" onward. To check your comprehension, try Review Questions 4
and 5.
Chapter 11 - Pleiostene
Glaciations
Here the focus shifts to
the climate of the past few million years, a period dominated by large
swings between ice ages and warmer 'interglacials'. Read the entire chapter.
Try Review Questions 1-5, Critical Thinking Problem 2b.
Chapter 12 - Short-Term
Climate Variability
This final chapter on climate
history focuses on the past 20,000 years and traces the recovery from the
most recent ice age and ends with a discussion of El Nino and other kinds
of short term climate fluctuations. Try Review Questions 1, 3, 4, 5, and
6.
Chapter 13 - Global
Warming
This chapter on the global
warming closely parallels the treatment in class. It contains some highly
informative graphs on future projections of carbon dioxide concentrations.
Chapter 14 - Ozone
Depletion
This chapter on the ozone
hole closely parallels the treatment in class. |