Winter Quarter, 2012 OCEAN 450: Climatic Extremes (SLN 16808)

Winter Quarter, 2012

OCEAN 450: Climatic Extremes (SLN 16808)
4 credits     (also Honors 221E:   SLN 14355  5 credits)

M, W, Th, F at 11:30 to 12:20
Ocean Teaching Building, Room 205
Web address: https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/paulj/13956/
Instructors: Paul Quay (685-8061) Paul Johnson (543-8474)

Course description – This course begins with an examination of the earth’s past for evidence of extreme climate conditions in order to put the current and future climate into perspective.  We’ll find that the earth’s climate has changed over a large range that includes Hothouse conditions during the Cretaceous (100 My ago) to Icehouse conditions during the Pleistocene (1 My) in comparison to the current Greenhouse conditions. We explore how preserved records of climate ‘proxies’ are used to reconstruct past climate change and examine the key processes and feedbacks in the earth’s system that controlled past climate changes and will influence our future climate. For example, climate shifts resulting from changes in solar insolation, ocean and atmospheric circulation, concentrations of greenhouse gases, plate tectonics activity, and carbon cycling will be examined.
In the final weeks of the course we’ll examine how human activity has perturbed the earth’s climate and evaluate predictions of likely future climate change largely based on the recent IPCC report.

Michelle Townsend
Student Services Coordinator                    mtown@ocean.washington.edu
School of Oceanography                          Phone: (206) 543-5039
University of Washington                          FAX: (206) 543-6073
Box 357940                                            Location: 108 Ocean Teaching Bldg.
Seattle, Wa 98195-7940                          Corner 15th Ave NE & Boat Street