Paleoclimate

3 credits · Graduate

Earth's climate is being impacted by humans. But how do we know this? And how does it compare to 'natural' climate variability in Earth's past? In this course, we take a historical view of the climate system to situate the present moment in geological context. We will first review the fundamentals of how Earth's climate system operates. Then acquaint ourselves with tools used to reconstruct past climate states and assess the evidence for past climate fluctuations recorded in the ancient sedimentary record. We will conclude with a student-led symposium in which various intervals of Earth history are discussed as analogs for future climate change.