Unit 5 systems@play

Unit 5 Teaching Objectives

• Cognitive/Propositional: Help students understand climate system function, including the nature of thresholds, feedbacks, and modeling.
• Behavioral/Practical: Empower students to interpret climate effects, both resulting from specific forcing mechanisms and recorded in proxy data.
• Experiential: Engage students in the complexities and uncertainties of the climate system and of climate science.

Unit 5 Learning Outcomes

• Lecture Instruction/Preparatory Reading
• List and describe climate system processes that complicate its interpretation.
• Explain the connection between climate records, human choices, and climate projections.
• Interpret a graph of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration.
• Describe the structure of a climate model, and the connection between the climate system we know and our possible futures.

• Case Study 5.1
• Experience the varied responses of climate system components to forcing mechanisms.
• Model climate manually using climate system relationships.
• Evaluate a climate model and its output.
• Case Study 5.2
• Graph and analyze ice core methane data.
• Calculate the rate of change in modern atmospheric concentration.
• Compare the radiative forcing of CO₂ and CH₄quantitatively.
• Predict the next chapter in this story and the place of humanity in it.

I designed this unit to function as one day of instruction in an introductory geology, meteorology, geography, or environmental science class. The lecture is customizable for different teaching needs, and the activities can be done in class, completed together as a lab, or completed as part(s) of a lab, depending on time and topical needs. As a standalone teaching collection, it introduces the concepts of climate science, climate records, and climate modeling in lecture instruction, and links climate modeling and ice core data with concerns for the future in class activities. In the Climate of Change InTeGrate Module, it follows introduction to and change in Greenland glaciers in Unit 4 and precedes discussion of mitigation and adaptation to climate change in Unit 6.

The materials for this unit include a student reading, lecture, activities, and a study guide. The lecture is optional. I recommend assigning the reading as preparation for class and using the lecture to lead a short discussion (or debrief students without the lecture) before beginning the activities in case students have questions on the reading. I designed these activities as a guided examination of climate records and the nature of scientific inquiry. You can implement the activities in class, in lab, or as homework. If you are teaching an introductory course, I recommend that they be done in class or in lab, since they differ from one another and the concepts can be difficult for introductory students to process in isolation.

• Unit 5 Reading: Your Climate Family

• Unit 5 Lecture (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 2.5MB Jun20 14)
• Unit 5 Lecture Slides (Acrobat (PDF) 1.5MB Jun24 14)
• Unit 5 Lecture Notes (Acrobat (PDF) 1.1MB Jun19 14)

• Case Study 5.1 - Interactions: Climate's Tangled Web
• Case Study 5.2 - Interpretations: Reading the Book of Earth
• Unit 5 Study Guide: Climate Components and Models

The greatest barriers you will face in teaching this unit will be resistance to climate science and fear of climate data and numerical analysis. Breaking these barriers is difficult and may not be possible, depending on your student population. The unit materials are all designed to help you in this endeavor, beginning with reintroducing the concept and advantage of science and climatology's place therein during the lecture. The way you discuss these issues is at your discretion. The materials focus on systems relationships rather than politics, helping both you and the students to circumvent some boundaries, rather than breaching them. Depending on your students' preoccupation with climate politics, keeping them focused may be how you spend your time during activities.

There are many resources listed below and on the associated activity pages to help you help your students.

I recommend that you use the Unit 5 activities formatively, so students can develop their understanding, ask questions, and learn by trial in class with you and their peers. I conduct the activities as in-class group work, but they could be individual as long as students are provided enough reference material.

Summative assessment questions:

* Sketch and label a feedback diagram associated with increasing the level of atmospheric CO₂. Indicate on the diagram if the feedback from increasing CO₂ is positive or negative. Explain the importance of these feedbacks in understanding uncertainties in projections of future climate.

List the datasets displayed on these graphs in Figure SPM.1 from the IPCC 5 report. How do these data relate to one another? Describe their possible implications for our future.

Climate models involve

A. known climate interactions.

B. known climate thresholds.

C. known climate feedbacks.

D. many possible outcomes.

E. all of the above

Humans have the power to affect climate change by

A. decreasing the amount of incoming solar radiation, which causes cooling.

B. increasing the amount of incoming solar radiation, which causes warming.

C. adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which cause warming.

D. adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which cause cooling.

E. no possible means.

Student Self-Assessment

To provide an opportunity for students to reflect on what they have learned in Unit 5, at the end of this unit ask students to write on an index card one thing that they feel they have learned in this unit, or that seems particularly clear, and one thing that still seems confusing, unclear, or incomplete. Collect the cards, and use them to determine what aspects of the topic might need to be revisited in another class.

Students can also test their knowledge by completing the Unit 5 outcome tasks. These can be adapted in Blackboard/Moodle to a quiz or set of open-ended questions.

• List and describe climate system processes that complicate its interpretation.
• Explain the connection between climate records, human choices, and climate projections.
• Interpret a graph of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration.
• Describe the structure of a climate model, and the connection between the climate system we know and our possible futures.

Climate science

• IPCC: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis
• ORNL CDIAC: Current Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
• NOAA ESRL: Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI)
• Obtaining Ice Core Data at the Data World Center
• NOAA CDC: Ice Core Data
• interactive e-book: UNEP GRID Global Outlook for Ice & Snow

Thinking/teaching/learning about uncertainty and the environment

• Bradshaw and Borchers (2000). Uncertainty as information: Narrowing the science-policy gap.
• Carvalho (2007). Ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge: Re-reading news on climate change.
• Heal and Kriström (2002). Uncertainty and climate change.
• Jamieson (1996). Scientific uncertainty and the political process.
• Wynne (1992). Uncertainty and environmental learning: Reconceiving science and policy in the preventative paradigm.
• Zehr (2000). Public representations of uncertainty about global climate change.