***New Section. Video coming soon***

Course Description:

Human activities are changing the earth’s climate, causing warmer temperatures and increasing the risk of more extreme weather. This is not simply an environmental issue: climate change is the defining engineering challenge of the 21st century. How can we develop effective technical solutions? How can scientists and engineers partner with communities to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies?

In this section, you’ll build foundational knowledge of the climate system, investigate technologies like renewable energy and carbon capture, and engage with ethical and equity questions surrounding climate solutions. Then, you and your team will work to design and assess a solution for a specific, local community.

This class will cover:

• Climate Systems: What is the climate system? How have human activities shaped its evolution?

• Green Technologies: What technologies and carbon management strategies exist to help mitigate climate change? What are their benefits and limitations?

• Engineering Ethics and Climate Equity: What ethical and equity concerns do engineers need to consider when developing climate solutions? How can this help us better address climate change and evaluate current climate solutions?

Term Project:

Identify a climate problem impacting a local community, research it, analyze proposed solutions, design a mitigation or adaptation strategy, and assess its impact on global climate and community resilience.

Labs:

Climate modeling, analysis and visualization of climate observations using python, and order of magnitude analysis