In this course, we will explore Earth's climate in the past, present and future. We will cover what climate is, how it changes on timescales of seasons to millions of years, and how it's expected to change in the future. Various components of the climate system including the oceans, atmosphere, and ice sheets will be discussed here. We will also explore how records of past climate, such as ice cores, tree rings, and corals, can tell us about Earth's climate in the past and how they can inform our predictions of the future. This will primarily be a lecture-style course with several interactive components.

Have you wondered what the world looked like when dinosaurs walked around the surface? The Earth is currently warming at an unprecedented rate since the dawn of industrialization. While most attention is focused on recent climate change and future projection, this interactive class will take a different perspective on Earth’s climate by looking into its past, over a range of time scales: from the far distant geologic past, dinosaur eras, then fast forward to the pre-historic past over human evolution. We will travel through time and look into how scientists piece puzzles together to reconstruct the past climate, how we think it has changed, and what we know about the evolution of biosphere and ecosystems at the turning points throughout the Earth history.