Climate change: Past and Future - 2023 entry

This module will provide a broad introduction to Earth’s climate system, past and present, and will equip you with the tools used to study the geologic record for evidence of past environmental and climatic change. You will learn to interpret and critically evaluate the evidence for a varied range of important past changes in Earth’s climate over the last 66 million years, guided by current internationally important research. You will learn about the importance of oceans in the Earth system, and about how climate and the carbon-cycle interact on a variety of time and spatial scales. You will learn how the Earth’s climate has changed both very slowly over million-year timescales, and occasionally shifted very dramatically over much shorter hundred to thousand year timescales. You will examine the influence of external orbital forcing on the climate and carbon-cycle throughout the Cenozoic. You will learn about the impact of recent human activities on Earth’s climate and about the implications of anthropogenic activities for future climate.

- To provide an introduction to the workings of Earth’s modern climate system (ocean-atmosphere-biosphere-cryosphere) with a particular emphasis on the role of the carbon cycle in regulating climatic change;

- To equip you with knowledge of the tools used by geologists to reconstruct past changes in Earth’s climate;

- To explore important transitions in Earth’s climate over the past 66 million years on millennial, orbital (10 to 100 thousand year) and tectonic (million year) timescales, as recorded in marine, terrestrial, and ice core records;

- To explore how palaeoclimate research can inform our understanding of the evolution of future climate in response to human activity;

- In meeting aims 1 to 4, you will be exposed to current internationally important research, including areas actively being researched at the University of Exeter, and will explore topics of scientific controversy in these areas.

On successful completion of this module, you should be able to:

Module Specific Skills and Knowledge:

1 Understand and explain how geologists reconstruct past changes in Earth’s climate using the concept of ‘climate proxies’ and relevant case studies from the scientific literature;

2 Quantify and evaluate the relationship between past changes in key aspects of Earth’s climate system (e.g., temperature, ocean circulation, continental ice-sheets, atmospheric carbon dioxide) during the past 66 million years, using a variety of published climate proxy records made available to you in this module;

3 Critically evaluate key published models developed to explain patterns of climate change on millennial, orbital and tectonic timescales over the past 66 million years, by reference to evidence from case studies from the research literature;

Discipline Specific Skills and Knowledge:

4 Appreciate how different aspects of the Earth-climate system interact with, and impact, one another;

5 Make scientific observations, recognise similarities between these and conceptual models and use these observations to determine or support geological interpretations;

Personal and Key Transferable / Employment Skills and Knowledge:

6 Collect and integrate several lines of evidence (including using numerical problem-solving skills) to formulate and test hypotheses;

7 Demonstrate independent (time management) study skills.

Key topics and themes to be covered include:

- What controls Earth’s modern climate at a global scale?;

- What is the importance of the oceans to global climate, past and present?;

- The endogenic and exogenic carbon cycle and the interaction with the Earth-climate system;

- What are ‘climate proxies’? Including sedimentological, palaeontological, and geochemical techniques as applied to marine, terrestrial and cryospheric archives;

- Exploring the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction and climatic upheaval. What killed the dinosaurs and why?;

- Exploring the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Where did all that carbon come from?;

- Exploring the transition from “Greenhouse” to “Icehouse” conditions during the Cenozoic. Why did the Antarctic ice sheet suddenly appear at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary?;

- Exploring the Middle Miocene Climatic Transition. What was the role of mass volcanism?;

- Exploring the mid Pliocene warm period and the Initiation of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. Why did the Northern Hemisphere (finally) glaciate on a large scale?;

- Exploring the origin and orbital pacemakers of Pliocene/Quaternary glaciation, and the history of the Greenland Ice Sheet. What happened during the mid Pleistocene transition?;

- Exploring the last deglaciation. What can this most recent warming event tell us about the sensitivity of ice sheets to rising CO2?;

- Exploring Holocene climate change. Why was the Sahara once green?;

- Modern and future climate change and the IPC. How can a robust understanding of palaeoclimate inform our understanding of future climate change?

If a student is referred or deferred, the failed / non-completed component(s) will be re-assessed at the same weighting as the original assessment.

Basic Reading:

ELE: http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/

Other Resources:

- IPCC 5^th Assessment Report (http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/)

- A selection of academic papers specific to each weekly topic.

Reading list for this module: