Winter 2024

  • GEOG 321: Climatology

Spring 2024:

  • GEOG 361: Global Environmental Change

  • GEOG 607: Seminar : Detecting climate change and natural variability

    Extended course description for GEOG 607: This seminar deals with the challenge of quantifying and framing the role that human activity has played in observed climate and environmental changes. Any observed change must be considered in the context of the natural variability of the climate system and other confounding factors. The warming of Earth’s average surface temperature over the industrial era is confidently attributable to greenhouse gas emissions and other human activity. Attribution becomes more challenging for more-specific, localized, or “downstream” changes. However, it is often such changes in local climate or specific subsystems that drive impacts to society and ecosystems, making this an important problem for understanding and adapting to climate change.

    We will trace the development of “climate attribution science”, which began with global-mean warming and today progresses into ever-more specific changes, such as regional climate anomalies, extreme weather, ice loss, wildfires, and others. We will begin with more-structured background topics, and progress into case studies on particular topics according to student interests.

    Guiding questions may include: For which changes in the earth system is the attribution to human activity most/least confident? (and why?) How must frameworks for attribution be adapted across different natural systems? What are the implications of climate attribution science for public dialogue, policy, and litigation?

Fall 2024

  • GEOG 421/521: Topics: Glaciology (Advanced climatology topics course)

    Course description: Glaciers and ice sheets play key roles in the long story of Earth’s climate and landscapes. Today, changes in the cryosphere also impact society on local and global scales. This course provides an introduction to the field of glaciology, covering key elements of glacier and ice-sheet dynamics and their interactions with climate. Systems from small mountain glaciers to continental ice sheets will be considered, with an emphasis on tracing common principles across scales and geographic settings. Major themes will include: the geography of current & past ice on earth as controlled by topography and climate; Fundamentals of ice flow and the primary flow regimes; Dynamics and timescales of response to climate; current methods and research priorities in glaciology. Prerequisites: GEOG 321, or similar Physical Geography or Earth Science course, or permission of instructor. Familiarity with introductory concepts in physics and calculus will be helpful.