Friday, February 27, 2015

More on modeling climate change

Am still doing this course as mentioned in the previous post. Heavy going at times with topics such as:

  • greenhouse gas physics
  • atmospheric feedbacks
  • carbon cycle
  • perturbed carbon cycle
  • solar and glacial cycles

Most weeks have models to set up using spreadsheets or programming. Some assignments require access to one or more of the Climate and Carbon Cycle Models available from University of Chicago.

One interesting prediction - if we stopped producing carbon dioxide today it would take the earth thousands of years to recover, may be hundreds of thousands. And we would not feel the full effect of what we have produced so far for hundreds of years during which the ice sheets would continue to melt and the sea level to rise...