overview | textbook | syllabus | page for class members

Combined annual land-surface air and sea surface temperature anomalies (°C) 1861 to 2005, relative to 1961 to 1990. Forth Assessment Report of the IPCC, Working Group 1, 2007.

Overview

The Earth’s climate has been changing since its formation 4.6 billion years ago. Climate varies on all time scales and is known to experience periods of glaciation as well as warmer periods. Since the industrial revolution, humans have burned large amounts of fossil fuels changing the composition of the atmosphere, cleared large forested regions for agriculture and caused climate to change.

This class describes the basic components of the climate system: the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and lithosphere. We investigate the basic physical processes that determine climate and link the components of the climate system. The class covers the energy budget, hydrological cycle and its role in climate, atmospheric and oceanic circulation, climate stability, global change, projecting climate and its application to human dimensions. This class is an upper level science course and will focus on the quantitative aspects of climate science.

Instructor: David Noone<dcn@colorado.edu>

When: Fall 2007; Tuesday Thursday 12:30-1:45pm

Where: Duane, RM G131

Prerequisites: One semester of calculus, and either ATOC 1050 and 1060, or ATOC 3300/GEOG 3301, or GEOG 1001.

Grading: Assignments (3) (40%), in-class problems (25%), midterm (10%), final exam (25%)

Office hours: Tuesdays after class. Please use sign-up sheet.

Exam: Tuesday, December 18th, 10:30am – 1:00pm

Textbook

Oliver and Hidore, Climatology: An Atmospheric Science, 2nd ed, Prentice Hall, 2002

Course outline

1 Overview of the climate system

Atmospheric composition, temperature structure of the atmosphere, geographic variations in temperature and variability, overview of general circulation, the cyrosphere,

2 Radiation and energy balance

Properties of EM radiation, longwave versus shortwave, Wien’s Displacement Law, Plank’s Law, Stefan Boltzman Law, solar cycles, orbital forcing, albedo. Energy flux at the top of the atmosphere, surface energy balance, poleward energy transport, terrestrial biosphere, clouds, aerosols

3 Water cycle

Source and sinks of atmospheric water, water transport pathways, latent heat exchange, role of water in energy cycle, freshwater budget of the ocean, mass balance of ice caps, moisture flux and flux divergence.

4 Atmospheric motions

Atmospheric stability, lapse rate, dry and moist diabatic processes, buoyancy, convection. Conservation of annular momentum, forces, effects of rotation, geostrophic and gradient flow, wind shear, vorticity, conservation of mass, divergence and vertical motion

5 Circulation of the atmosphere and ocean

Total energy transport, overturning circulation, El Nino-Southern Oscillation, gyre structure, Ekman transport, cyclones, fronts, storm tracks, monsoons

6 Climate variability and extremes

Droughts, floods, hurricanes, the polar regions, sea ice, ice sheets, sea level rise.

7 Climate of the past

Records of past climate, the Holocene, glacial cycles, ice core records, isotopes, tree rings, corals, variation in atmospheric composition.

8 Climate change present and future

Records of climate change, climate variability, measuring and monitoring climate change, impacts on human activity, climate models, the IPCC process.

 

Last updated: