History and Science of Climate Change

This course will provide an understanding of the Earth's climate system and how and why this has changed through time. The emphasis will be placed on spatial and temporal scales in the modern system while exploring the evidence for past change, possible mechanisms to explain these changes and the implications of these changes to past, present and future global climate. Students will learn to reconstruct the history and scales of climate change through the use of proxies; understand the mechanisms that act to drive climate change; show and understanding of the long-term natural climate variability on a global and regional scale; understand the importance of natural environmental change, against which to assess human impacts, recent climate change and issues of future environmental change.