Course Outline

Our goals in this course are to understand how the Earth's climate system works, and to identify the processes responsible for variability in the climate system. We will examine the natural greenhouse effect, how the energy of the Sun drives the climate system, and the role of biology in the climate system. We will investigate why the climate of Earth differs from that of its neighbors Mars and Venus. We will try to explain the different seasonal cycles in the tropics, midlatitudes, and polar regions. We will examine the reasons for large natural variations in the climate system on time scales that are both long (the ice ages) and short. We also will discuss changes in the climate system due to the activity of humans, which have become important only very recently. These anthropogenic climate forcings include greenhouse warming, desertification, and atmospheric aerosols. We will also discuss the global depletion of ozone and the ozone hole.

The textbook is available in the UW Bookstore. The text will be supplemented with handouts.

The course meets in Room 310c ATG five days a week at 8:30 am. Usually the schedule will be three hours per week of lecture/discussion (Warren), one hour per week tutorial (Fitzpatrick), and one hour per week for a special topic, a guest lecturer or a slide show illustrating climatic principles. There will be eight Homework Assignments set for the quarter. Five of the assignments are problem sets which you are encouraged to collaborate with your classmates on, but you must write up your own work for submission. There will be ample opportunity in tutorials to discuss the problem sets. Please ask for help from the instructor and teaching assistant should you need it.

One of the assignments will be a short essay on a special topic. During the course we will be reading and discussing articles from general scientific journals (eg. Scientific American, New Scientist, and Physics Today). To facilitate our discussion, two of the assignments involve writing a brief 2-page critique of each of two papers. We will arrange a "scientific" conference toward the end of the quarter, possibly on a Saturday morning or weekday evening. You will be required to choose your own conference topic and present a 12-minute presentation, then submit a research paper at the end of Finals Week. There will be a Final Exam.

                              { Problem Sets (x 5)                25
Assignments           { Essay (x 1)                             5
                              { Critiques (x 4)                       20
Research Paper and Conference Presentation         20
Final Exam                                                             25
Classroom participation                                            5

Week Three Greenhouse Effect, Atmospheric Circulation

Week Four Hydrological Cycle, Ocean Circulation

Week Five Carbon Cycle, Climate in Earth's History