Global Warming

A flipped course

Dorian S. Abbot

Contents

1 Why You Should Care 1

1.1 Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 Heat Stress Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.3 Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.4 Global Warming and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

1.5 Mass Extinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2 Climate Records 27

2.1 Weather and Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

2.2 The Temperature Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2.3 The Carbon Dioxide Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

3 Radiative Physics Overview 40

3.1 Electromagnetic Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

3.2 Sunlight and Seasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3.3 Albedo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

3.4 Blackbody Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

3.5 Greenhouse Gasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

4 Simple Climate Model for Understanding 64

4.1 One-Layer Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

4.2 Ice-Albedo Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

4.3 Water-Vapor Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

4.4 Clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

4.5 Cloud Feedbacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

5 Fancy Climate Models 85

5.1 Global Climate Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

5.2 Climate Sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

5.3 Estimating the Climate Sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

6 What We Can Do 98

6.1 CO2 Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

6.2 What We Can Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

7 References 105

1 Why You Should Care

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1.1 Introduction and Overview

Notes

Critical points you need to know by the end of class:

1. This is a flipped class. You need to read the notes before each class and you will do work in

groups of 3-4 during class time (as long as we can get this working on Zoom).

2. Your grade will be based on five tests during the quarter, a short video project, and a cumulative final.

Coronavirus: We all have to make adjustments to remote learning. I hope that if we all do our

best you guys will learn something and enjoy the course material. We will be flexible and ready to

adjust the class as necessary based on how it is going. I’m hopeful that this will work!

One major adjustment we will have to make is that we can’t do the labs in person. In fact, I

can’t even go to campus to make videos using the lab equipment. Instead I found videos showing

similar equipment and experiments. We are going to watch these and answer questions based on

them. It is a sub-optimal solution, but it’s the best we can do this quarter. If you are interested in

playing with the actual equipment, contact me when the crises is over and we can set that up.

Flipped class: Most science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses are

taught in lecture format, yet this format has been proven to be extremely ineffective at helping

students learn material. This has led Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman to write [1]

If a new antibiotic is being tested for effectiveness, its effectiveness at curing patients

is compared with the best current antibiotics and not with treatment by bloodletting.

However, in undergraduate STEM education, we have the curious situation that, although more effective teaching methods have been overwhelmingly demonstrated,

most STEM courses are still taught by lectures – the pedagogical equivalent of bloodletting.

This course will be taught in the “flipped” format, where you will read some short notes at

home, then come in and work in small groups on problems to learn the material. The goal is to

constantly put you in low-risk situations where you have to actively demonstrate knowledge. This

will help you make sure you actually know what we’re learning. If you find out that you don’t

know something as well as you thought you did, your fellow students and section leader will be

right there to help you.

Format: Before each class meeting I expect you to read a few pages of notes that introduce new

material. There will be a list of the most important points for that day at the top of the notes. Use

active reading techniques like underlining important points and taking notes in the margins. Make

sure to make a note of anything you don’t understand. You can do this on the pdf or on paper if you

want to print these notes out. When you come into class your section leader will give a 10 minuteslong mini-lecture that will introduce the material for that day based on notes that I’ve prepared for

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them. Then you should ask any questions that came up when you read the day’s material. After

this you will form groups of 3–4 students and work on the day’s problems (using Zoom breakout

groups). Wieman told me that this is the best group size for encouraging participation. Please talk

and interact freely as you work on the problems. Write your answers on the pdf, on paper in a

notebook, or start a google document with your group where you record all of your answers. In

the last 10 minutes your section leader will give the solutions to the day’s problems and you can

ask questions about anything you still find confusing. Make sure to write down the solutions and

understand them because we will not be distributing solutions. The reason for this is to encourage

you to come and participate in class. The reason for this is to maximize your learning.

Learning objectives: As a physical science core, this class will emphasize helping you develop

the folowing skills:

1. Extracting information from complicated, quantitative plots

2. Scientific notation

3. Units of different quantities

4. Unit analysis

5. Order of magnitude

6. Percentage change

The specific topic of this course is global warming. I hope that by the end of the course you will

be able to give a brief summary of the case that global warming is occuring and that humans are

causing it. See the table of contents for a list of the topics we will cover.

Evaluation: Your evaluation in this class will be based on the following:

1. Attendance (25%): Attendance will be taken each day. If you need to miss a class for religious reasons, sickness, a family emergency, or a sports event, notify your section learder

in advance and you will not be penalized. If you have an extended sickness or family emergency that will last for more than two classes, you need to speak with me about it, not your

section leader.

2. Quizzes (25%): There will be five quizzes throughout the quarter, which you will take

during the normal class time. The quizzes will be on the first 5 sections of these notes. The

quizzes will be designed to test the material you learned in class, but will not require as much

mathematical manipulation. The point of the quizzes is to give you a chance to practice your

quantitative skills and global warming knowledge before the final.

3. Final Project (25%): The final project will be to record a 60 second video argument to

convince a scientifically literate skeptic that global warming is happening and is caused by

humans. You will need to use what you have learned in the course to do this.

4. Final Exam (25%): There will be a final exam that will cover all of the material in the

course. It will be in a similar format to the tests, but about twice as long.

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Grades: Grades will be assigned in this class based on the following grading scheme: A: [93-

100]; A-: [90-93); B+: [87-90); B: [83:87); B-: [80:83); C+: [77-80); C: [73:77); C-: [70:73);

D: [60:70); F: [0:60). “[87-90)” means including exactly 87 and not including exactly 90. The

scheme will be built into Canvas and I will use the grades that it automatically determines. I will

not round up your grade for any reason. The reasons for this are