Project General Information

Topics
The purpose of this project is for you to do a little extra research on some climate topic of interest to you. The list below provides some topics from which you may choose. You are certainly welcome to come up with your own topic, as long as it has some connection to climate and provides the opportunity for some analysis and/or original thought.

Due to the size or the class, I would like you to do the projects in pairs. I realize that this may present some challenges, but I am sure that we can manage them. Each project will consist of a single poster (combined effort) and individual short papers on some focused aspect of the project. (For example, if you chose the topic on “Seasonal climate forecasting”, one of might write a short paper on how the forecasts are done and what the forecasts look like, while the other might write a short paper on who uses the forecasts and how reliable they are.)

By Wednesday, May 4, please find a partner and identify at least 2, and preferably 3, topics that you would like to study. Send an email (one per group) to ackerman@atmos.washington.edu with the names of the partners and your ranked choice of topics. Indicate if the topic is from the list below (give the number) or if it is your own idea. Some of the topics below have an *; in the case of those topics, please identify the focus of the topic. (For example, if you choose a state climatology project, identify which state you are considering.)

We (the TAs and I) will then coordinate the topic suggestions among the groups so no two projects are the same. If you have any questions about the process, please talk to us.

1. CLIMATE OF THE PRESENT

1) Describe the climate of some state or country using data from the web(*)

2) Describe some aspects of year-to-year climate variations using data from the web or other sources. (*)

3) Describe the record high and/or record low temperatures in some region using data from the web or other sources. (*)

4) Describe climate trends during the 20th century

5) Evaluate the Gaia hypothesis (read the book by Lovelock)

6) Describe the economic impacts of El Nino

7) Seasonal climate forecasting: how is it done? who uses it?

8) Compare climates of the east coast and west coast at the same latitude

9) How successful are El Nino predictions?

10) Have hurricanes become more frequent in the last 50 years?

11) Compare climates of the east coast of North America and the west coast of Europe

12) Compare climates of the west coast of North America and the east coast of Asia (China and Japan)

13) What does traditional knowledge (knowledge of native peoples) tell us about climate?

14) Describe the economic influence of the Indian or Asian monsoon (*)

15) How is climate data used to manage natural resources?

16) Describe the climate conditions associated with dust storms in Africa or China

17) Describe the influence of land use changes on climate

18) Investigate the role of volcanic eruptions on climate

19) Contrast the role of sulfur aerosol and carbon aerosol in its effect on climate

20) Describe how either satellites or surface measurements are used to monitor climate and climate change

21) Describe the United States Climate Change Science Program focusing on the important scientific issues that it identifies

22) Describe the activities in an international research program (past experiment: TOGA-COARE; future experiment: AMMA) and how they relate to climate

23) Desertification: is it due to climate change or human activity (use either the Sahal in Africa or the Rajasthan desert of India as case studies)

2. CLIMATE OF THE PAST

1) What role did climate play in the demise of the Anasazi, Thule, or other civilizations? (*)

2) How do historical accounts of climate contribute to our knowledge of climate (e.g., Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period) (*)

3) Describe the climate of the Permian/Triassic Boundary and the massive extinction

4) Describe the climate dynamics of the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth

5) Was the Little Ice Age global?

6) Was the Younger Dryas global?

7) Investigate the extinction event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction; was it due to a meteorite impact?

8) Investigate the problem of biology and its survival through the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth

9) Effect of climate on the peopling of the New World

10) Effect of the Little Ice Age on 19th century civilization

11) The American Dust Bowl

12) Make some simple calculations to show that it is hard for Mars to ever have had liquid water on its surface, in spite of the geological evidence

13) Describe the climate-related thesis in the book by Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies. (This is a tough one!)

3. CLIMAGE CHANGE/ CLIMATE OF THE FUTURE

1) What is the expected impact of global climate change on water resources, ecosystems, coastal zones, human settlements, insurance, or human health? (each of these is covered in one chapter of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC 2001) (*)

2) Discuss the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change

3) What are the prospects for renewable energy? You could focus on either natural or technical solution (*)

4) Techno-fixes: technological solutions for sequestering carbon dioxide

5) Are trends in weather-related insurance claims related to climate change?

6) Shrinking tropical glaciers.

7) Effect of global warming on high latitude climate.

8) Investigate the issue of uncertainty in climate prediction; use the IPCC 2001 as a guide. Relate this uncertainty to climate models

9) Explain why predicting future cloud distributions and cloud feedbacks is challenging? Use the IPCC 2001 as a starting point

10) What are the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC 2001? How could the IPCC be better? (Choose either book on climate physics or climate impacts) (*)

11) Investigate how climate change is harder to predict on smaller spatial scales and how this translates into high uncertainty in climate impacts

12) The Freedom Car: how does a hydrogen car work (in theory) and how will it impact fossil fuel use

Getting Started
Your textbook has a lot of relevant information scattered throughout the various chapters, especially Chapter 8, Chapter 11 and Chapter 12. You can also refer to the links below, and do your own searches in the literature or on the web. Let us know if you have any trouble finding relevant references.

Links
Review article by Thomas Crowley in "Consequences, the nature and implications of environmental change" (http://www.gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/winter96/geoclimate.html)

Another starting point: NOAA paleoclimatology program (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/)

Ice age climate reconstructions (http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc.html)

Reference list for ice age climate (http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/refs.html)

African Climate and Human Evolution (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/Climate_evol.html)

Cultural responses to climate change during the late Holocene (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/CultureClimate.html)

Floods, famines, and emperors : El Niño and the fate of civilizations. Brian Fagan. Basic Books, New York, 1999.

The Little Ice Age : How climate made history 1300-1850. Brian Fagan. Basic Books, New York, 2000.