Project General Information

Topics
The tabled below includes a list of topics you can choose from.  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. 

We strongly encourage you to work in groups. If you are having trouble finding a group, let us know and we will help you find each other. Tell us as soon as possible and give some general area of interest.

Send an email to atms211@atmos.washington.edu

By Thursday January 26 tell us your topic choice. Please include the number or tell of if it is your own idea.  Tell us who is in your group. If necessary, we will give priority to those of you who respond first, so every group has a unique topic.

THOSE IN READ ARE ALREADY TAKEN, SO CHOOSE SOMETHING ELSE!

1. CLIMATE OF THE PRESENT

1) Describe the climate of some country and how climate influences business, politics, agriculture, etc of your chosen country  (* Tell us what country. India is taken, and countries in the Sahel)

2) Describe climate trends during the 20th century and how they have affected society, business, agriculture, etc

3) Evaluate the Gaia hypothesis (read the book by Lovelock and/or papers critiquing the idea)

4) Describe the economic impacts of El Nino and other modern day climate phenomena. Are predictions serving the communities that could benefit?

5) Seasonal climate forecasting: how is it done? who uses it? Make recommendations for ways of improving the way forecasts are given.

6) What is the latest word on how hurricanes might depend on global warming. Have hurricanes intensity and frequency changed in the last 50 yrs? Is the story the same for all oceans? Why is this topic so politicized?

7) What does traditional knowledge tell us about climate or weather? Compare and contrast its use in different parts of the world. How could this knowledge be used by others?  What are the roots of this traditional knowledge?

8) How do climate scientists communicate with the public? How could it be more effective?

9) Describe the monsoon circulations in more detail. How do they effect local and global economies?

10) How is climate data used to manage natural resources like fishing, forests, etc?

11) Desertification: Is it due to natural or human activity (consider the Sahel and/or Rajasthan)?

2. CLIMATE OF THE PAST

1) What role did climate play in the demise of the Anasazi, Thule, Aztec, or other civilizations? (Egyptian is taken!)

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 massive extinctions that have occured in the last 500 million years (ie Permian/Triassic Boundary and Cretacous/Tertiary Boundary).

4) Describe the climate dynamics of the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth. Investigate the problem of biology and its survival.

5) Describe evidence that argues the Little Ice Age was global versus more localized in Europe.

6) Investigate the Younger Dryas.

7) In what ways has climate influenced geological development on timescales of tens to hundreds of millions of years?

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

9) Effect of climate on the human settlement history. Compare and contrast its influence on various cultures.

10) Effect of the Little Ice Age on society, agriculture, politics, etc.

11) Describe theories that relate human evolution to climate change.

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

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 or coping with the consequences of global warming.

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

6) How are glaciers shrinking around the globe? Compare the cause of shrinkage in various regions.

7) What are the effects of global warming on high latitude climate (temperature, permafrost, sea ice, ice sheets, etc).

8) Investigate the issue of uncertainty in climate prediction, use the IPCC 2001 as a guide. Relate this uncertainty to climate models. How is uncertainty interpreted by the public?

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? (Focus on the books on climate physics or climate impacts)

11) Describe the focus, goals, content, etc of the IPCC,  US National Assessment, and US Climate Change Science Program

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.