Susan Kaspari: Using Understanding Our Changing Climate in Climate Variability and Climate Change at Central Washington University

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Provenance: Susan Kaspari, Central Washington University
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About this Course

Upper division and graduate students. Students were from geological sciences, environmental sciences, and biology.

10

students

Three 50 minute lectures and one 3 hour lab.

Kaspari GEOL 441_541 syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 199kB Jul8 19)

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In this course students will gain an understanding of how the Earth's climate varies naturally, how human activities are contributing to climate change, how much more climate is projected to change this century, and what the impacts of this change will be. Lab
sessions will be spent doing case studies or working with real climate data to address topics such as the earth's radiative balance, ocean-atmosphere interactions, and how climate change will affect the living and physical (glaciers, the ocean) world. A major component of the course will consist of students working in groups to conduct a quarter long community based research
project.

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In addition to the outcomes listed in the course description, students should:

• improve their ability to deal with uncertainty and complexity and to think critically
• evaluate the impacts of current and future climate change
• gain an improved self awareness of how their individual choices may contribute to climatechange

This module was used in an upper division- graduate level Geoscience course. The stakeholder analysis was conducted as a jigsaw activity with three groups conducting the stakeholder analysis for the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Southern California. The groups then presented to the class on the impacts and options for mitigating sea level rise. Ran as a jigsaw activity, the students saw the stark difference in the impacts of sea level rise on Bangladesh and Maldives in contrast to Southern California. This led to an interesting and lively conversation about who is causing climate change and sea level rise, who is being most impacted, and who is responsible for mitigating the impacts of climate change. Working with the data in subsequent units gave the students a variety of surprising insights into the way to climate-ice-water system behaves.

Relationship of GETSI Materials to my Course

The course is 10 weeks (quarter system). The module was implemented in Weeks 6 and 7. Prior to that, we had covered the Earth's Radiation Budget, Ocean-Atmosphere Circulation, Reconstructing Climate and Natural Climate Change, Anthropogenic Climate Change, and Observed Changes. We then transitioned to this module for the following two weeks.

A Unit-by-Unit Breakdown of How I Taught this Module

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Assessments

Outcomes

1. The module puts a face to climate change and sea level rise. For many students sea level rise is somewhat abstract. Through the stakeholder analysis and stakeholder memo, students gained a much broader view of how sea level rise is impacting key stakeholders, and the challenges in mitigating sea level rise.
2. Many students were not well informed about the causes of sea level rise. Using geodetic data, the students discover the relative contributions of thermal expansion, glacier and ice mass loss, and changes in land water storage to sea level rise. Many students were surprised by the results.