Climate Changes
GEOS/ENVI 215
About the course Logistics Schedule of lectures and readings About the professor
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In recent years, there has been a growing public and scientific interest in the Earth's climate and its variability. This interest reflects both concern over future climate changes that may result from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases and growing recognition of the economic impact of "natural" climate variability (for example, El Niño events), especially in the developing world. Efforts to understand the earth's climate system and predict future climate changes require both study of parameters controlling present day climate and detailed studies of climate changes in the past. In Climate Changes, we will review the processes that control the earth's climate, like insolation, distribution of heat, ocean circulation, and the greenhouse effect. We will discuss modern and future climate variability while reviewing the geological record of climate changes in the past, examining their causes, positive and negative feedback effects, and indicators of the stability or instability of the climate system.
Climate Changes is aimed at interested students from non-science as well as science backgrounds, has no prerequisites, and assumes no prior knowledge of geology.
Time: Tuesday and Thursday 9:55 – 11:10
Where: Clark Hall Rm 204
Format: Lectures/discussions
Grading based on:
Two hour exams
(25% each)
Final project (25%)
Exercises
and discussion (25%)
My life at Williams actually started a decade ago on the other side of the classroom (class of ’94). For the past three years, I have lived in northern Spain, where I was a geoscience professor at the University of Oviedo and an avid hiker in the Pyrenees. Last spring, I taught “Cambios Climaticos”, Climate Changes, in Spanish, to students from many different departments. My research specialty is in finding new tools to study past climate changes using the chemistry of shells from tiny algae in ocean sediments.
