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What you will learn in Climate Change and the Carbon Cycle

1. Where the carbon is
Carbon moves between air, life, ocean and rock on four timescales at once. Audit the budget term by term, add the fossil flux last, and see why it is different in kind from everything else.
2. The Keeling curve
The longest direct record of the air's carbon dioxide, read at two scales: a yearly sawtooth and a rise beneath it. Three stations from the Arctic to the South Pole test what makes the sawtooth.
3. Eight hundred thousand years
Antarctic ice holds samples of ancient air. The record swings with the ice ages and stays inside a band the present has left. Rate, not level, is what has no precedent, and the lead-lag question is answered head-on.
4. Whose carbon is it
The added carbon carries two isotopic signatures, one from how it was made and one from how old it is. Mix the candidate sources yourself and find which one matches both.
5. Forcings and feedbacks
Every push on the planet's energy balance on one axis, the Sun included at its measured size. Then the feedbacks that amplify or damp the response, with the uncertain one drawn as the band it is.
6. Reading the record honestly
True data can be charted to tell a false story. Build a misleading chart on purpose, name every trick, and then build the honest one, with a year when sea level fell as the worked example.
7. Models
A model small enough to run here, tuned against the thermometer record, and what happens when the greenhouse gases are taken out of it. What a full climate model adds, and what no model can do.
8. Scenarios, impacts and responses
A projection is a range attached to a scenario, never a prediction and never a line. Compare pathways, sort the findings by how well they are known, and sort responses into mitigation and adaptation.

What you will learn in Climate Change and the Carbon Cycle

1. Where the carbon is

Carbon moves between air, life, ocean and rock on four timescales at once. Audit the budget term by term, add the fossil flux last, and see why it is different in kind from everything else.

2. The Keeling curve

The longest direct record of the air's carbon dioxide, read at two scales: a yearly sawtooth and a rise beneath it. Three stations from the Arctic to the South Pole test what makes the sawtooth.

3. Eight hundred thousand years

Antarctic ice holds samples of ancient air. The record swings with the ice ages and stays inside a band the present has left. Rate, not level, is what has no precedent, and the lead-lag question is answered head-on.

4. Whose carbon is it

The added carbon carries two isotopic signatures, one from how it was made and one from how old it is. Mix the candidate sources yourself and find which one matches both.

5. Forcings and feedbacks

Every push on the planet's energy balance on one axis, the Sun included at its measured size. Then the feedbacks that amplify or damp the response, with the uncertain one drawn as the band it is.

6. Reading the record honestly

True data can be charted to tell a false story. Build a misleading chart on purpose, name every trick, and then build the honest one, with a year when sea level fell as the worked example.

7. Models

A model small enough to run here, tuned against the thermometer record, and what happens when the greenhouse gases are taken out of it. What a full climate model adds, and what no model can do.

8. Scenarios, impacts and responses

A projection is a range attached to a scenario, never a prediction and never a line. Compare pathways, sort the findings by how well they are known, and sort responses into mitigation and adaptation.