Climate change (Class of 2019)

One of the international exchange courses, Tokyo Metropolitan University

Time: Academic year 2019, 1st semester (April-July 2019), Thursday 13:00-14:30

Place: Minami-Osawa campus, Building 12, Room 208

[Syllabus]

Note: Correspondence between date (mentioned in the syllabus) and content may change during the course.

[Information of books] (to be updated frequently)

Schedule and course materials

This section will be updated weekly, both before and after lectures.
Sometimes, materials which have appeared here will later be replaced with links to other pages.
[x] Links to pages made by other people than the lecturer.
[r] Pages with Restricted access

[11 Apr.] [Introduction: Three layers of the concept of climate; Overview of the climate system]
[18 Apr.]
- [Earth system(s) and environmental problem(s)] (addendum to the lecture of 11 Apr.)
- [Can climate be changed? Various considerations]
- [Global warming was "discovered" while the world was not warming.] (page updated at night of 18 Apr.)
(19 Apr.) On 18 Apr. I missed mentioning open house events of research institutions in Tsukuba Science City, to be held in the weekend 20-21 Apr. as an opportunity to know about climate-related science. Some institutions have museums which are open regularly. I put information I have collected here on my blog. [Open house of research institutions (related to geo-science) in Tsukuba Science City]
[25 Apr.]
- [Info about Prof. Ohmura's lecture on 23 May] (tentative)
- [Components of the climate system; How much air and water are on the earth, and where?]
[ 2 May] No lecture. I will be in the office (8th Building 773).
[ 9 May]
- [Energy conservation in the climate system]
[16 May]
- [Electromagnetic waves]
- [Zero-dimensional energy balance model]
[23 May]
- [Carbon dioxide and (steady-state) climate change, in terms of vertical 1-dimensional models]
- My lecture will be shortened, to end around 14:00.
- (optional) 14:30-16:00 Special lecture by Prof. A. Ohmura (words in Japanese, presentation in English) at International House, 16:00-(18:00?) reception.
[30 May]
- [Carbon dioxide and climate change (2): 3-dimensional models]
- [Short report assignment 1]
[6 June]
- [Carbon dioxide and climate change (3): developments in 1970s-1980s]
  - [Delay due to oceanic heat capacity]
[13 June]
- Deadline of [Short report assignment 1]
- [Interactions between climate science and international policymaking]
[20 June] (The materials will later be re-ordered and moved to other pages)
- Rough plan of the term report (equivalent to examination)
- Briefly reviewing [Short report assignment 1]
- Decision with uncertain knowledge
  - We cannot wait for certain knowledge.
  - Simple quantitative "risk" or "cost-benefit" thinking and its limits
    - total net benefit = sum of ("net gain" × probability)
    - e.g. lottery
    - Needs (some estimate of) probability of each outcome
    - Problems
      - Can all gain and loss be put on the same axis and same measure (e.g. monetary)
      - How to deal with gain and loss at different time? "present value" with "discount rate"?
      - How to deal with gain and loss to different people? (inter-personal, inter-sector (industry etc.), inter-regional, inter-generational)
      - Is (probability-weighted) average a good indicator? Or, is extreme cases more important?
      - How certain are those values of probability?
  - "Precautionary (principle)" thinking and its limits
    - It is important to reduce possibility of "very bad" (or "worst") outcome.
    - Problems
      - "Very bad" is not in one direction. e.g. nuclear power plant accidents vs. global warming
      - We can imagine a "very very bad" cases with very very low probability.
  - [Expression of uncertainty by IPCC] "likely" and "confidence"
- Mark Maslin (2014) Climate Change :[Table of contents]
[27 June] (The materials will later be re-ordered and moved to other pages)
- Countermeasures to anthropogenic climate change (brief view)
- Projection (cf. prediction) of future climate change
  - See my diagram in ["Countermeasures" page] or [Page of 2019-June-13]
  - CMIP3 (used by IPCC AR4): (social development) -> emission scenarios (IPCC "SRES") -> concentration -> climate [IPCC WG1] (-> impacts [WG2]) (-> evaluation of mitigation policies [WG3])
  - CMIP4 (used by IPCC AR5): modified to start from concentration scenarios "RCPs" (developed outside of IPCC)
  - Concentration (RCP scenarios), emission, projected global mean temperature in IPCC AR5
  - Not just global mean temperature! (to be discussed next week.)
- "Detection and attribution" of past climate change
  - "Temperature has risen!" "The main cause is carbon dioxide from human activities!"
  - (Perhaps necessary to motivate policymaking.)
  - More difficult than projection. A typical way uses the following components. It requires good simulation model(s).
    - Analysis of observation
    - Simulation with all probable forcing
    - Simulation without the forcing in question (with other forcing)
  - [x]IPCC AR5 WG1 Chap. 10 Fig. 10.1 (IPCC)
    - (For caption, see Chapter 10. p. 879 of IPCC AR5 WG1 available from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 )
  - [x]IPCC AR5 WG1 Chap. 10 Box 10.1 Fig. 1 (IPCC)
    - (For caption, see Chapter 10. p. 874 of IPCC AR5 WG1 available from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 )
  - [x]IPCC AR5 SYR Fig. 1.10 (IPCC)
    - (For caption, see p. 49 of IPCC AR5 SYR available from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr )
- Expert knowledge about projection of future global warming is (relatively) more robust than that about detection and attribution of past global warming.
  - Knowledge of future global warming comes from theoretical thinking.
  - Detection and attribution requires simulations based on theoretical thinking in addition to analysis of observations based on empirical thinking.
  - Appearance of warming in surface temperature delays, because of heat capacity of the (upper) ocean.
  - (But it is difficult to explain it to non-experts.)
- Mark Maslin (2014) Climate Change : [browsing]
  - Important parts from my point of view: Chapter 4 (projection), 5 (impacts), 8 (countermeasures)
[4 July]
- Various aspects of "projected" climate change in the 21th century
  - Some figures were shown with notations in Japanese. They will be put with notations in English earlier than 11 July.
- A rough idea of the term report assignment
[11 July]
- Impacts of climate change
- Some more on Countermeasures to anthropogenic climate change
[18 July]
- Concluding remarks
- Term report assignment
- A simple energy balance model of global warming
- Mark Maslin (2014) Climate Change : [browsing] (My memo about its Chapter 2 is added, though not explained in the lecture time.)
- Some additions to [Information of books]
[25 July] (no lecture)
[1 Aug.] (no lecture) Deadline of the term report (Box in front of the office in the International House). I will probably come to my office (Building 8, Room 773) in late afternoon, and visit the International House to collect reports in the evening.
[8 Aug.] Follow-up lecture
[10 Aug.] Finished evaluation of term reports.
[12 Aug.]
- Some more remarks are added to the page of Follow-up lecture.
[1 Sep.] My example computer program [co2warming.R] for [A simple energy balance model of global warming] had just very crude output capability. On 1 Sep. 2019, I added another version of the program which produces a graph. [co2warming_graph.R].
[16 Sep.] I added R sample programs [co2warming_write.R] which writes results to a file, and [co2warming_read_graph.R] which reads the file and makes a graph to [A simple energy balance model of global warming]. I also revised [co2warming_graph.R].

About the lecturer

Masuda 増田 (family name), Kooiti 耕一 (personal name)
Department of Geography, visiting professor
Office: Building 8, Room 773 (attendance irregular, usually Tue, Thu after class)
e-mail: ... (a "passive" user)
Personal web site: http://macroscope.world.coocan.jp
Discipline: meteorology (part of geophysics)
Achivements: global energy and water cycle in the atmosphere and the hydrosphere
Recent interests: climate - society interactions

Updated: 2019-Sep-16
MASUDA Kooiti

[Index page of "Climate change"] [educational materials] [Entrance page in English] ["Home" page] of K. Masuda

[International Exchange Courses] page of the International Center, TMU