{"id":16783,"date":"2014-02-01T12:34:44","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T17:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/?p=16783"},"modified":"2014-02-02T13:01:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T18:01:37","slug":"new-climate-science-moocs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2014\/02\/new-climate-science-moocs\/","title":{"rendered":"New climate science MOOCs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Along with David’s online class<\/a> a number of new climate science Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are now coming online.<\/p>\n


\nA new online course from MIT, “Global Warming Science”, introduces the basic science underpinning our knowledge of the climate system, how climate has changed in the past, and how it may change in the future. The course focuses on the fundamental energy balance in the climate system, between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation, and how this balance is affected by greenhouse gases. They also discuss physical processes that shape the climate, such as atmospheric and oceanic convection and large-scale circulation, solar variability, orbital mechanics, and aerosols, as well as the evidence for past and present climate change. Climate models of varying degrees of complexity are available for students to run – including a model of a single column of the Earth’s atmosphere, which includes many of the important elements of simulating climate change. Together, this range of topics forms the scientific basis for our understanding of anthropogenic (human-influenced) climate change.<\/p>\n

The introduction video gives a flavour of the course, which is presented by Kerry Emanuel, Dan Cziczo and David McGee:<\/p>\n