An Introduction to Climate Change

About the lecture

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.

About the lecturer

I am professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading Department of Meteorology. My research is driven by the fundamental question: how much will Earth warm in the current century and what are the implications for the global water cycle, upon which societies and ecosystems depend? I use Earth Observation data to explore fluctuations in clouds, water vapour, rainfall and the Earth's radiative energy balance and use this information to assess the realism of climate prediction models and improve our understanding of the climate system. I am a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th assessment report.