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If we want to determine whether humans are influencing the climate of our planet, we need to know how much the earth's climate fluctuated over the hundreds of millions of years before human activities and what caused the fluctuations. We will study the history of earth's climate, including effects of variations in greenhouse gas concentrations, the locations of continents, the circulation patterns of oceans and atmosphere, the intensity and duration of volcanic eruptions, and the productivity of the earth's biota on land and in the sea. We will look at climate variations at various time scales: over billions of years, the oceans never boiled or froze, showing stability within the climate band that makes life possible. On time scales of hundreds of millions of years the earth has seen climates with ice caps close to the equator ("snowball earth"), as well as climates without polar ice caps ("greenhouse earth"). During the last 65 million years, the earth cooled, and ice sheets formed at the poles. D uring the last few hundred thousand years, the polar ice sheets expanded and shrunk many times, with our present climate presenting a very warm stage. During the last millenia climate has been colder (Little Ice Age) as well as warmer than today (Medieval Climate Optimum). We will look at these past variations in the Earth's climate and try to understand the implications for possible future climate change.
Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: NSM E&ES Grading Mode: Student Option
Prerequisites: E&ES101 OR E&ES106 OR E&ES199 Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-26-2001
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459