Course content

The IPCC has published reports about the changing climate. The course discusses the physics that we need to understand climate changes, the composition of the atmosphere and its structure, thermodynamic processes, and atmospheric stability. The course continues with a discussion of transmission of solar and heat radiation, especially its dependency on aerosols, clouds and other variable components, as well as the consequences of climate change and prevailing discourse on this topic.

This course is available to civil engineering students as a complementary course (K-emne). It is available to MTFYMA, MSPHYS and MLREAL as an ordinary physics course.

Learning outcome

After completing the course, students should be able to:

• Apply fundamental principles of physics to understand fundamental atmospheric and climate-change processes.
• Have insight into the methods that are used in predictive models for weather and atmospheric climate change.
• Be familiar with thermodynamic concepts for atmospheres with and without water vapour.
• Understand the processes behind aerosols, clouds and precipitation, and how particles and clouds affect solar radiation in the atmosphere.
• Find and analyse data from extreme weather events.
• Develop the radiative transfer equation in a plane-parallel atmosphere, accounting for absorption and emission of longwave radiation and the absorption and scattering of shortwave radiation in cloudy and cloud-free atmospheres.
• Describe principles from radiative transport to understand remote sensing measurements from satellites.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, miniprojects and exercises. Expected workload in the course is 225 hours.

Recommended previous knowledge

Basic knowledge in physics and mathematics.

Course materials

To be announced at the beginning of the semester.

Credit reductions