Picture: Munising Falls, Munising, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, April 2015.

This material has evolved from several years of doing one or two guest lectures in classes at the University of Michigan in many disciplines. The students are usually climate interested, and they want a summary lecture or two. They want to understand the foundation of the science and feel confident that it is actionable.

The intent is that the audience listens to this material prior to any class, and the class focuses on clarification and discussion. In class, I usually include some material to steer towards the discipline of the class in which the lecture is given.

The lectures are in different states of production, and updated occasionally.

It is generally more reliable to download the lectures than to listen to them in MBox preview.

The “One Hour” Summary of Climate Change

  1. Motivation (8:16 Minute Lecture, slides, pdf): This lecture is focused on three slides  on ocean heat content and surface temperature observations. It discusses heat accumulating in our  environment, the speed at which it is occurring, and the fact that it will continue for the coming decades. We will be living in a rapidly changing climate; we must learn to thrive in that climate.
    1. Rood: Pulling Back from the Climate Precipice
  2. Short History of Climate Change and Impacts (13:02 Minute Lecture, slides, pdf): This lecture refers to Spencer Weart’s history and describes the science-based approach to study the Earth’s climate. The general conclusions of our study of the Earth’s climate are stated.
    1. Spencer Weart: The Discovery of Global Warming
    2. Callendar: 1938 Discussion of Combustion and Global Warming
    3. Nice review of Callendar (1938) – Also, a very short history
    4. NYTimes: Eunice Foote, Overlooked No More
  3. How Carbon Dioxide is Changing (18:38 Minute Lecture, slides, pdf) This live capture lecture and questions introduce the “Keeling Curve” of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa and then looks at a breakdown of what has been causing the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
    1. NOAA: Global Monitoring Laboratory Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases (Data Source)
    2. NOAA: Global Monitoring Laboratory 800,000 Year Animation
      1. Three-minute story of 800,000 years of carbon dioxide
      2. Carbon Dioxide Highest in Last 800,000 Years
    3. Data Grabber
    4. Perspective: Encounters with the Keeling Curve
  4. How Temperature is Changing and Predicted to Change (12:22 Minute Lecture, slides, pdf) This live capture lecture examines both temperature observations and projections of temperature change. The idea of “fingerprinting” to attribute temperature changes to greenhouse gases is introduced.
  5. Consequences of Warming: Physical Climate: (22:00 Minute Lecture, slides, pdf)
    1. Washington Post interactive beyond 2 degrees
    2. Emergence of complex societies after sea level stabilized
    3. Ice sheet melting in line with worse case scenarios
    4. The Ring People: Shell islands off South Carolina Coast, built by indigenous Americans, washing away as sea level rises.
  6. Framing the Response to Climate Change (3:22 Minute Lecture, slides, pdf); The language of response: Mitigation, Adaptation, Climate Intervention (geo-engineering)
    1. Gibbons: Growth and Maturity of the Climate Adaptation Field (2020 lecture)

 

Additional material:

NASA Vital Signs of the Planet