Historical Climatology and Global Climate Change

This course will look at climate trends through the lens of civilizations across the globe. The Maya, Indus and Nile have been cradles to great civilizations, each impacted to a different degree by climate variability. Climate change is now causing history to repeat itself through the displacement of people as climate refugees in places like Honduras, Pakistan and Ethiopia. In this course, we will focus on and analyze instrumental, observational and geologic datasets to assess the role of climate in shaping past civilization and modern society.