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Climate change

Climate change is a key issue on today's social and political agenda. This free course explores the basic science that underpins climate change and global warming.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
- understand the physical basis of the natural greenhouse effect, including the meaning of the term radiative forcing
- know something of the way various human activities are increasing emmissions of the natural greenhouse gases, and are also contributing to sulphate aerosols in the troposphere
- demonstrate an awareness of the difficulties involved in the detection of any unusual global warming ‘signal’ above the ‘background noise’ of natural variability in the Eath's climate and of attributing (in whole or in part) any such signal to human activity
- understand that although a growing scientific consensus has become established through the IPCC, the complexities and uncertainties of the science provide opportunity for climate sceptics to challenge the Panel's findings.
First Published: 14/08/2012
Updated: 30/10/2018
You can start this course right now without signing-up. Click on any of the course content sections below to start at any point in this course.
If you want to be able to track your progress, earn a free Statement of Participation, and access all course quizzes and activities, sign-up.
Course content
- Introduction
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Global climate and the greenhouse effect
- 1 Global climate and the greenhouse effect
- 1.1 Introduction
- 1.2 What determines the Earth's GMST?
- 1.3 Energy flows within the Earth-atmosphere system
- 1.4 An overview of the global energy budget
- 1.5 'Radiative forcing' as an agent of climate change
- 1.6 The human impact on the atmosphere: the coming of the industrial age
- 1.7 Summary
- 1.8 End of section questions
- 2 What do we know about recent climate change?
- 2 What do we know about recent climate change?
- 2.1 Preamble
- 2.2 Records of the Earth's temperature
- 2.3 Contested science: a case study
- 2.4 The meaning of 'consensus': peer review and the IPCC process
- 2.5 A 'collective picture of a warming world'
- 2.6 An evolving consensus on attribution
- 2.7 Summary
- 2.8 End of course question
- Conclusion
- References
- Acknowledgements
- This site has Copy Reuse Tracking enabled - see our FAQs for more information.
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About this free course
18 hours study
Level 2: Intermediate
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