Mechanisms of Past
Climate Change
16:375:553
3 credits
Wednesdays and Fridays, 9:15-10:35 AM
Room 223, ENRS Building, Cook Campus
Course description
Grading
Class schedule
Papers to be discussed
Online essays on reading
scientific papers
Final projects
The geological record contains evidence of substantial changes in climate during Earth’s distant past. Identifying the mechanisms responsible for these changes can provide insights into fundamental climate system processes. This course will focus on four questions, each of which is at the forefront of contemporary climate research:
1)
How are periodic fluctuations in Earth’s climate related to slow changes
in the shape of Earth’s orbit?
2)
How sensitive is Earth’s climate to
radiative forcing?
3)
Did changes in the ocean’s overturning circulation cause millennial-scale
climate variability?
4)
Was tropical Pacific climate
variability (e.g., El Nino) different in Earth’s
past?
Each of these questions will be addressed through a combination of traditional lectures, readings from the scientific literature, and group discussion. There are no formal prerequisites for the course, but some preparation in atmospheric science, physical oceanography, paleoceanography, physical geography, or geology is strongly recommended.
An important objective of this course is the development of critical thinking. Your grades will be determined by how well you can convince me of (1) your ability to think critically and (2) your ability to communicate your ideas to others, both in speaking and in writing. Your success will be evaluated based on your performance in the following categories:
Class participation
Discussion leader: 20%
Open discussion: 20%
Synthesis papers (for each of four topics): 40%
Oral presentation of final project: 20%
| September 5 | Course overview |
| September 7, 12 | Lectures: Orbital forcing of climate |
| September 14 | Discussion: Raymo and Nisancioglu (2003) |
| September 19 | Discussion: Huybers and Wunsch (2005) |
| September 21 | Discussion: Kawamura et al. (2007) |
| September 26 | Discussion: Muller and MacDonald (1997) |
| September 28, October 3 | Lectures: Estimating climate sensitivity from past climates |
| October 3 | Synthesis paper 1 due |
| October 5 | Discussion: Hoffert and Covey (1992) |
| October 10 | Discussion: Lea (2004) |
| October 12 | Discussion: Crowley (2000) |
| October 17 | Discussion: Oerlemans (2005) |
| October 19, 24 | Lectures: Climate variability on millennial time scales |
| October 26 | Synthesis paper 2 due |
| October 26 | Discussion: Zhang and Delworth (2005) |
| October 31 | Discussion: Weaver et al. (2003) |
| November 2 | Discussion: Alley et al. (2001) |
| November 7 | Discussion: Rohling et al. (2004) |
| November 9, 14 | Lecture: Tropical Pacific variability |
| November 14 | Synthesis paper 3 due |
| November 16 | Discussion: Clement et al. (2000) |
| November 21 | Discussion: Wara et al. (2005) |
| November 28 | Discussion: Koutavas et al. (2002) |
| November 30 | Discussion: Stott et al. (2002) |
| December 5 | No class today |
| December 7 (note: class starts at 8:20) | Synthesis paper 4 due; Oral presentations of final projects |
| December 12 | Extra meeting time (in case we need it) |
Most of the papers to be discussed are available online through the Electronic Journals web page maintained by the Rutgers University Libraries. The Resources web page of the Center for Environmental Prediction is a good place to start for information about the RU library system. Not all journals are available electronically; more specifically, AGU journals are not available through the Rutgers system. (AGU members can access papers from AGU journals published prior to the current year by following the link for that journal from the AGU Publications web page.) In a small number of cases, you may have to resort to using the library the old-fashioned way. (Sorry!)
Alley, R. B., S. Anandakrishnan, and P. Jung, 2001: Stochastic resonance in the North Atlantic. Paleoceanography, 16, 190-198.
Clement, A. C., R. Seager, and M. A. Cane, 2000: Suppression of El Niño during the mid-Holocene by changes in the Earth's orbit. Paleoceanography, 15, 731-737.
Crowley, T.J., 2000: Causes of climate change over the past 1000 years. Science, 289, 270–277.
Hoffert, M.I. and C. Covey, 1992: Deriving global climate sensitivity from paleoclimate reconstructions. Nature, 360, 573-576.
Huybers, P., and C. Wunsch, 2005: Obliquity pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial terminations. Nature, 434, 491-494.
Kawamura, K., et al., 2007: Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years. Nature, 448, 912-916.
Koutavas, A., J. Lynch-Stieglitz, T. M. Marchitto, Jr., and J. P. Sachs, 2002: El Niño-like pattern in ice age tropical Pacific sea surface temperature. Science, 297, 226-230.
Lea, D.W., 2004: The 100,000-yr cycle in tropical SST, greenhouse forcing, and climate sensitivity. J. Climate, 17, 2170-2179.
Muller, R. A., and G. J. MacDonald, 1997: Glacial cycles and astronomical forcing. Science, 277, 215-218.
Oerlemans, J., 2005: Extracting a climate signal from 169 glacier records. Science, 308, 675-677.
Peterson, L. C., G. H. Haug, K. A. Hughen, and U. Röhl, 2000: Rapid changes in the hydrologic cycle of the tropical Atlantic during the last glacial. Science, 290, 1947-1951.
Raymo, M. E., and K. Nisancioglu, 2003: The 41 kyr world: Milankovitch's other unsolved mystery. Paleoceanography, 18, doi:10.1029/2002PA000791.
Rohling, E.J., et al., 2004: Similar meltwater contributions to glacial sea level changes from Antarctic and northern ice sheets. Nature, 430, 1016-1021.
Stott, L., C. Poulsen, S. Lund, and R. Thunell, 2002: Super ENSO and global climate oscillations at millennial time scales. Science, 297, 222-226.
Wara, M.W., A.C. Ravelo, and M.L. Delaney, Permanent El Niño-Like Conditions During the Pliocene Warm Period. Science, 309, 758-761.
Weaver, A. J., O. A. Saenko, P. U. Clark, and J. X. Mitrovica, 2003: Meltwater pulse 1A from Antarctica as a trigger of the Bølling-Allerød warm interval. Science, 299, 1709-1713.
Zhang, R., and T. L. Delworth, 2005: Simulated tropical response to a substantial weakening of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. J. Climate, 18, 1853-1860.
Online essays on reading scientific papers
Simon Hunt, University of Oxford,
“Reading Scientific Papers” (based on PowerPoint talk)
http://users.path.ox.ac.uk/~svhunt/internal/Grads/Reading_Scientific_Papers_files/frame.htm
John W. Little and Roy Parker,
University of Arizona, “How To Read A Scientific Paper”
(life sciences perspective; good section on evaluating a paper)
http://www.biochem.arizona.edu/classes/bioc568/papers.htm
Elizabeth Willott, University of
Arizona, “Reading a Scientific Paper”
(good section on how to read papers for different purposes)
http://research.biology.arizona.edu/mosquito/willott/proj/Survive/paper.html
The final project will consist of a 15-minute presentation that discusses and critically evaluates a particular mechanism of past climate change. The mechanism that you choose to evaluate should be one that we have discussed in class (or one that is closely related). Time limits will be strictly enforced! These presentations will be similar in length to those typically given at large national meetings (e.g., American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society), so it will be good experience to learn how to organize your thoughts in a concise manner.
| Student | Topic | Presentation Date |