Courses / Module

Modern climate change, at its most fundamental level, is the consequence of the radiative imbalance caused by increased and increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This radiative imbalance causes an excess of heat to be trapped in the atmosphere, which is where the term ‘global warming’ arises. Over 90% of this excess heat trapped in the atmosphere has been stored in the ocean---in other words, ‘global warming’ could as accurately be described as ‘ocean warming’. Understanding the ocean’s response to climate change is key to understanding climate change itself.
This course uses the IPCC AR5 report as the fundamental jumping off point for investigation of the ocean and climate change. The fundamental properties of the ocean (temperature, salinity, chemistry, freezing) are introduced first and threaded through the course to study ocean warming, salinity, sea ice, sea level rise and the ocean’s overturning circulation.