Seminar description: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides the international consensus synthesis of findings about climate change: observations, forcings, attribution, and prediction. SIO has many observational and some modeling programs that contribute to the IPCC. We will examine the IPCC process, its findings, its most recent activities, and include visits to SIO lab facilities that have contributed to IPCC science. Syllabus is posted on tritoned.ucsd.edu
Principal link:
IPCC website
Each week take one of the executive summary conclusions and burrow down to see where the evidence comes from, methods used, quality of the inference, and then follow where that conclusion has gone into present planning
Week 1 Jan. 9 IPCC introduction & Carbon/climate forcing Presentation: IPCC, links, carbon, Keeling
Week 2 Jan. 16 lab visit: Keeling lab (atmospheric carbon and oxygen records) (atmospheric CO2 and oxygen records)
Week 3 Jan. 23 Heat and freshwater Presentation: heat and freshwater in the IPCC
Week 4: visit to SIO Argo float lab (webpage for lab, click on SIO ARGO)
Week 5 Feb. 6 Sea level
Week 6 Feb. 13 lab visit: SIO pier (100-year records of temperature, salinity, phytoplankton and sea level
Week 7 Feb. 20 Paleoclimate & cryosphere
Week 8 Feb. 27 lab visit: Severinghaus ice core lab (using air bubbles in ice cores to reconstruct past climate)
Week 9 March 6 Aquarium visit
Week 10 March 13 Summary. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ presentation online