Course Details

Course offered Winter 2013

Honors 221 C: Climate Extremes (NSc)

Honors 221 C: Climate Extremes (NSc)

SLN 14740 (View UW registration info »)

Paul Quay (Oceanography)
Office: 417 Ocean Science Bldg, Box 355351
Phone: 206 685-8061
Email: pdquay@uw.edu
Paul Johnson (Oceanography)
Office: 256 Marine Science Bldg, Box 357940
Phone: 206-543-8474
Email: paulj@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 15 students

Honors Credit Type

Cross-listed with OCEAN 450 A.
This course examines the earth’s past for evidence of extreme climate conditions in order to better understand possible future climate changes. Conditions that occurred during the Neo-Proterozoic (Snowball Earth: 750 to 550 million years ago), the Cretaceous Hothouse (100 million years ago, and Pleistocene Icehouse (1 million years ago) will be compared to the Present Greenhouse climate.

Dramatic changes in the earth’s climate has resulted from natural variations in solar insolation, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, rates of ocean circulation, plate tectonics and volcanic activity, the evolution of vascular plants and, in recent times, the burning of fossil fuels. The impact of these factors on climate, through interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and land, will be discussed. Importantly, the processes that produced past climate changes will be discussed in the context of modern impending climate change.

One class period per week will be spent in class discussion of an important paper. Problem sets, stressing quantitative solutions, will be given as take home assignments during the quarter.