An Introduction to Climate Change

Climate Change

In this course, Professor Richard Allan (University of Reading) tackles the topic of climate change. We begin in the first module with an introduction to climate change, what it is and the history of how the climate has changed throughout history. In the second module we focus on how the climate can be influenced, the energy transfer between the earth and the sun and the greenhouse effect. In modules three and four we look at not only how climate change is impacting the planet currently but also how climate change will impact the planet going forwards into the future. In the fifth and final module we investigate how we can limit climate change using both small scale efforts but also international collaboration.

An Introduction to Climate Change

In this module, we kick off with an introduction to climate change. We note that: (i) the climate has always changed and that natural phenomenon such as the tilt of the earths axis and volcanic eruptions result in this changes in climate; we then (ii) look at the history of climate change, both describing the interglacial period that we live in today, but also we describe how the climate has changed over the past 800,000 years; to finish off (iii) we describe how carbon can move from the land and ocean into the atmosphere both through natural processes but also artificial processes such as land use for agriculture.