Unit name | Extreme Climates of the past |
---|---|
Unit code | GEOG30017 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. Rachel Flecker |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
There are no pre-requisites but students will be offered an optional revision practical to ensure that their Excel skills are appropriate for the practical tasks. |
Co-requisites |
Available to year-three Geography and year- four Geography with Study Aboard/Continental Europe students only. |
School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
Faculty | Faculty of Science |
The unit will comprise up to ~12 lectures, six computer-based practicals and ~3 2-hour seminars. The coursework component will provide 40% of the unit’s assessment, while the remainder will come from a two-hour unseen paper comprising two essay answers each worth 30%.
In order to assess the anthropogenic impact on climate, it is first necessary to understand natural climate variability. In this unit we consider the available data on the Earth’s climate over geological time focusing particularly on extreme warm and cold episodes in Earth history.
The unit is offered without prerequisite.
Aims:
Element 1 : Extreme warm climates of the past
This element of the unit will ask students to consider why investigating past climate is important. Its lectures and practicals will also provide an introduction to how climate proxies are used to reconstruct past climate. The course ends by considering the evidence for warm climates in the past and questions how well we can model them.
Element 2: Ice at both poles
The main focus of this element is how the Earth System behaved during the Quaternary when there extensive ice sheets developed in both hemispheres. The lectures and practicals introduce students to a variety of climate proxy archives that are used to test climate models and constrain climate forcings.
Model-data comparison of the big melt
On completion of this Unit students should be able to:
The following transferable skills are developed in this Unit:
Critical evaluation of literary sources
Lectures, seminars & practical sessions
Essential Reading
1. Stocker, et al. (eds.) (2013) Climate Change 2013: The Scientific Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, UK. Also available at http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1
2. Souch C (2003) Getting information about the Past: palaeo and historical data sources. Clifford, N.J. and Valentine, G. (eds), Key Methods in Geography. Sage 195-208
Further reading is provided at the end of each lecture