Climate Change

Course Description

Objectives

The course of Climate Change is an introductory course in the fields of climate variability, greenhouse effect and large-scale atmospheric phenomena.

At the end of the course the student is expected to be able to understand the natural and anthropogenic impacts on the global climate and analyse the scenarios and their dynamical feedbacks.

The practical session of the course provides fundamental knowledge on data analysis software while the laboratory work is essential for the learner in order to demonstrate its skills on climate data processing and various scenarios assessment.

Content

1. Differences on Climate change and climate variability

2. The radiation budget of the Earth

3. Natural and enhanced greenhouse effect

4. Physiochemical properties of the greenhouse gases

5. Scenarios of greenhouse gases emission

6. The land use change

7. ENSO and its impact on global climate

8. Climate projections

9. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

10. The Kyoto protocol and the contribution of Greece as an EU member

Teaching & Assessment

The teaching method is consisting of 3 hours attending lectures on weekly basis. The course also includes four hourly practice and laboratory works. The basic assessment type of the course is the written examination at the end of the semester (3 hours).