Instructor: John Chiang
547 McCone
2-3900
Time and location: Mon , 575 McCone. Office hours: Th 2-4 or by appt.
Grading & requirements: Pass/Fail (unless you need a grade – talk to the instructor). Students taking it for credit are expected to attend all classes, to complete all reading assignments and actively participate in the discussion.
Format: Weekly reading assignments of the recent literature or selected chapters of texts, for discussion in class. One of you will be nominated to lead discussion for each week.
Topic: Paleoclimate modeling
We will survey recent (and not so recent) literature in the modeling of paleoclimate, primarily of the Holocene and last glacial. The emphasis will be on processes, with special focus on the role of the tropics in paleoclimate.
3 weeks will be devoted to the nuts and bolts of climate models, an overview of processes important for climate change, and paleoclimate modeling to date. Then, I propose covering a subset of the following topics, depending partly on your interest:
1) Thermohaline circulation changes
2) El Ni–o-Southern Oscillation in the past
3) North Africa during 6Kbp
4) The tropical mean temperature during LGM
5) Climate impact of the Laurentide Ice sheet
6) The 100K cycle problem
I invite students to propose topics:
7) Asian monsoon
8)
9)
10)
11)
12)
Vote for your top 3 and send it to me email by Wed. I will decide on the topics, and nominate students for each topic.
Topics in Climatology (GEOG 257)
1 Introduction – what is the purpose of (paleoclimate) modeling? Verification, validation, and confirmation of numerical models in the Earth Sciences (Oreskes et al. 1994).
2 Climate modeling – overview (Hartmann Ch 10 on Global Climate models)
3 Climate sensitivity – overview (IPCC 1995 chapter on climate processes)
4 Paleoclimate modeling – overview (Bradley Ch 12)
5 Role of thermohaline circulation in climate (Manabe and Stouffer 1999)
6 Global impacts of thermohaline circulation shutdown (Vellenga and Wood 2002)
7 Ocean circulation and climate during the past 120,000 yrs (Rahmstorf 2002)
8 Coupling of the hemispheres in observations and simulations of glacial climate change (Schmittner et al. 2003)
9 Decadal variability in the Pacific I (Sarachik and Vimont 2003)
10 Sarachik and Vimont, continued; Climate change and the tropical Pacific (Pierrehumbert 2000)
11 Orbital controls on ENSO and the tropical climate (Clement et al. 1999)
12 The importance of tropical sea surface temperature patterns in simulations of the LGM (Yin and Battisti 2001)
13 Tropical Pacific climate at the mid-Holocene and LGM simulated by a coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model (Kitoh and Murakami 2002)
14 Review of paleo-monsoon; A comparison of simulated monsoon circulations and snow accumulation in Asia during the mid-Holocene and at the LGM (Bush 2002)
15 North Africa during the mid-Holocene: Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the mid-Holocene (Claussen et al. 1999); Wrap up (group discussion)