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Lecture

Climate Change Basics

In course

ENV-410: Science of climate change

The course equips students with a comprehensive scientific understanding of climate change covering a wide range of topics from physical principles, historical climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC assessment to future scenarios and climate ac ...

Description

This lecture covers the fundamentals of climate change, including the greenhouse effect, radiative transfer, aerosols, clouds, radiative forcing, feedback mechanisms, climate sensitivity, paleoclimate, and the Paris Agreement. It also discusses emission gaps, IPCC reports, climate scenarios, tipping elements, extreme events, and mitigation strategies. The instructor emphasizes the impact of climate change on global weather patterns, extreme weather events, and the vulnerability of socioeconomic systems to climate variability.

Instructor

Julia Schmale

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Environmental science

Climate: Climate change

Related concepts (32)

Climate change

In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane.

Climate change scenario

Climate change scenarios or socioeconomic scenarios are projections of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions used by analysts to assess future vulnerability to climate change. Scenarios and pathways are created by scientists to survey any long term routes and explore the effectiveness of mitigation and helps us understand what the future may hold this will allow us to envision the future of human environment system. Producing scenarios requires estimates of future population levels, economic activity, the structure of governance, social values, and patterns of technological change.

Climate change feedback

Climate change feedbacks are effects of global warming that amplify or diminish the effect of forces that initially cause the warming. Positive feedbacks enhance global warming while negative feedbacks weaken it. Feedbacks are important in the understanding of climate change because they play an important part in determining the sensitivity of the climate to warming forces. Climate forcings and feedbacks together determine how much and how fast the climate changes.

Climate sensitivity

Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much Earth's surface will cool or warm after a specified factor causes a change in its climate system, such as how much it will warm for a doubling in the atmospheric carbon dioxide () concentration. In technical terms, climate sensitivity is the average change in global mean surface temperature in response to a radiative forcing, which drives a difference between Earth's incoming and outgoing energy.

Economic analysis of climate change

The economic analysis of climate change explains how economic thinking, tools and techniques are applied to calculate the magnitude and distribution of damage caused by climate change. It also informs the policies and approaches for mitigation and adaptation to climate change from global to household scales. This topic is also inclusive of alternative economic approaches, including ecological economics and degrowth. Economic analysis of climate change is considered challenging as it is a long-term problem and has substantial distributional issues within and across countries.

Related lectures (32)

Radiative Forcing & Climate Sensitivity

Explores radiative forcing, climate sensitivity, and feedback mechanisms in climate change, emphasizing the role of various components like CO2 and methane.

Climate Change Mitigation

Explores polar and alpine climate change, mitigation strategies, and climate engineering, covering topics like greenhouse effect, Paris Agreement, IPCC reports, and extreme events.

Paleoclimate, Climate Variability, Paris Agreement

Delves into paleoclimate, climate variability, and international climate agreements.

Greenhouse Effect: Understanding Climate Sensitivity

Explores the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, climate sensitivity, and the Earth's energy balance.

Global Warming: COP27 Recap