A planet’s climate is primarily driven by the energy received from its Sun, which varies with latitude, season, and orbit. The complex interplay between the energy influx and atmosphere, ocean, and land has made Earth a unique planet with stable climate conditions for hundreds of millions of years. This long term stability has allowed plants and animals to flourish, including humans! What sustained Earth’s temperate climate? What do projections say about future climate? How do we make climate predictions? How likely are our predictions to become reality? This summer experience program will guide you through building a computer model to answer these questions. This class will provide an immersive and interactive learning experience.

This course will prepare you for continued learning in disciplines such as earth and environment sciences, political science, and social justice in college. More specifically, upon completion of this course you will be able to:

• Explain the unique nature of ongoing climate change in the context of Earth’s climate history
• Make sense of climate projections
• Be able to conduct basic statistical analysis with a computer language

• Model Earth’s energy balance, greenhouse effect, and feedbacks that drive planetary temperature evolution
• Model the carbon cycle and the evolution of CO2 in the atmosphere
• Estimate how temperature may evolve following different future socioeconomical development scenarios
• Analyze climate simulations and assess their uncertainties