The Earth's Atmosphere

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

In this course we mine Earth’s geological record for the evidence that allows us to understand the links among the evolution of Earth’s oceans, lithosphere, cryosphere, and atmosphere. We will employ and extend concepts in physics, chemistry, biology, and system dynamics to understand the composition of the atmosphere and related climate at several stages in geologic time, including the present. Students will complete the course with a firm grasp of the forcings, feedbacks, and impacts of climate change. The principles in science and system dynamics that we will develop in the course have applications across a broad suite of issues in science and policy. Learning Goals: • Develop an understanding of the fundamental Earth processes that occur within and between the crust of the earth, the ocean, the atmosphere, and ice. • Develop an understanding of how biological, chemical, and physical phenomena recorded in Earth’s geologic record have led to stable climates or slow evolution of climates through geologic time. • Understand how anthropogenic activities have altered the global landscape, the composition of the atmosphere, the composition of the oceans, and the global distribution of ice, and how current changes are both causes and impacts of the warming of the earth. • Understand and explain how and why the warming is not uniform, and how the overall warming creates greater extremes of temperature and precipitation in the troposphere, on the surface, and in the ocean. • Be able to develop, express, and explain these processes and relationships in a system dynamics context. • Recommend and defend appropriate actions to reduce anthropogenic warming.