Global Climate Change in Context

to place modern climate and the projections of future global warming into a longer-term perspective, and will allow students to understand why human interference in the climate system may be a legitimate cause for concern. Emphasis is placed on how Earth materials (ice, rocks, sediments, biological materials) record past climate changes, the techniques used to extract this ‘palaeoenvironmental information’, and the principles that govern how this information is interpreted. A series of lectures covering the theoretical elements of the subject will immediately precede 10 days of field study (in either Tasmania, mainland SE Australia or New Zealand). The field component focuses on how particular environments (e.g. coastal, lake, fluvial, cave, and glacial) preserve evidence of past climate change. Additional lectures and practicals following completion of the field work will focus on the types of analytical methods employed in this field, the nature of the data that are produced and how these are processed and interpreted. By the end of the subject, students will not only appreciate the dynamics of Earth’s past climate and the mechanisms that have forced it, but also the way in which we practice this important and growing field of study. Note this subject may be taken as the Capstone subject in the Geography major of the BSc. All students, whether they are capstone students or not, will be required to complete online introductory materials that are common across all field classes, and will be invited to a discussion session together at the end of their Capstone study and experience.

• 1To recognise the nature of past climate changes, i.e. the frequency, magnitude and geographic extent
• 2To differentiate the range of driving mechanisms of past climate changes, particularly how they vary according to the time scales considered
• 3To identify specific palaeoenvironments and materials and how these preserve evidence of past climate changes
• 4To describe the advantages and weaknesses of the various 'palaeoclimate archives'
• 5To gain hands-on field experience in the identification, sampling and analysis of a range of important 'palaeoclimate archives '
• 6To organise, analyse and interpret palaeoclimate data
• 7To synthesise key literature and current debates on past climates
• 8To recognise how the current global warming debate fits into the longer-term perspective