GEOSC-308 Earth’s Climate Past, Present, and Future

Never has it been clearer to people that Earth’s climate is changing in dramatic and often catastrophic ways. Yet how do we know these changes are unprecedented within Earth’s history, particular over the past 4 million years? The goal of this course is to explore what paleoclimatic archives (e.g. sediments, speleothems, ice cores, tree rings, and climate model outputs) tell us about past climate and rates of change. Using these data as baselines, we will then explore how these records inform our understanding of Earth’s climate today, and finally to explore the implications of what this means under different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) pathways.

Maximum Enrollment

Other

Credits

1

Prerequisite

One 200-level Geosciences course with a lab or ENVST-206. If you have taken a 200-level, non-lab Geosciences course (including those cross-listed with Geosciences), please see the department for permission.