Welcome to Atmospheric Sciences 111: Global Warming - Summer 2013
Instructor: Mike Warner
Email: mdwarner 'at' atmos.washington.edu
Office: ATG 622
Lecture: Tuesday and Thursday 10:20-1:00 p.m. in ATG 610
Office hours: Thursday 1:00-2:00 p.m. in ATG 402 or by appt.
Website: http://atmos.washington.edu/~mdwarner/courses/atms111
Required textbook: The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson, 3rd edition (2011)
Announcements
8/08/2013: Homework #4 posted!! I did it! Have a great weekend!!7/29/2013: Homework #3 solutions and Quiz #2 review sheet posted! Check Course Materials link.
7/18/2013: Homework #3 posted! Great job on the quiz, everyone!
7/16/2013: Homework solutions are now posted for HW#1 and HW#2 (see Course Materials link at right). Also, Quiz tomorrow!
7/02/2013: Homework #1 posted! It's due July 9th! Also, look for a second homework that will be posted by Thursday to be due the following week.
6/25/2013: Slides from the first lecture are now available. Click Course Materials link at right!
6/21/2013: Schedule for the first few weeks is now available! See link at right...
6/12/2013: Syllabus is now available! See link at right...
6/03/2013: Welcome to the ATMS 111 course webpage for Summer 2013! Additional pages with a syllabus and schedule will be coming soon.
Overview
Human-induced climate change - popularly known as "global warming" - is one of the great challenges facing society in the 21st century.
If we ignore the problem, and continue on our current course, by the end of this century the climate changes due to increased greenhouse gases will be large enough to have significant consequences on the environment and on civilization. Those changes are essentially irreversible, since once the carbon dioxide reaches those high values in the atmosphere, it is likely to remain high for several more centuries, during which Earth's surface will continue to warm.
To avoid these changes will require either (i) a wholesale change in the sources of energy used by humans, (ii) yet to be developed methods to sequester carbon on an unprecedented scale, or (iii) intentional human modification of the Earth's energy budget to partially cancel the warming that will result from the increased greenhouse gases due to human activity (so-called geoengineering solutions to global warming).
At stake are deeply felt values as well as entrenched economic
interests. When these are combined with scientific
uncertainty, it is not surprising that global warming has
sparked a raging, often passionate debate.
In this course, you will learn:
- the basic science of global warming
- the consequences of global warming to date
- how the climate is projected to change over this century
- impacts these projected changes will have on ecosystems and people
- what the scientific consensus is
- what the major sources of uncertainty are
- what solutions exist to mitigate or avoid additional global warming
Last modified: Thu Jul 18 16:22:00 PDT 2013