Instructors:

Prof. Jeff Dozier, 4512 Bren Hall, dozier@bren.ucsb.edu

Prof. Charlie Kolstad, 3416 Bren Hall, kolstad@bren.ucsb.edu

Class meets Th 5:30—7:10

This class is designed to immerse you in the problem of climate change, from the points of view of both the physical sciences and. In addition, the class will convey the interrelated nature of the natural and social science dimensions of the climate change problem. However, the course is not comprehensive – many important dimensions of the problem will not be covered.

To achieve the goal of understanding the multidisciplinary nature of climate change, we will make heavy use of a simple policy model of climate change that contains elements of the natural science side of the problem as well as economics. Part of the course involves developing your own economic model of the climate and economy to use for policy analysis, based on William Nordhaus’ DICE model, listed in the back of his book. The software used to run the model is called GAMS – the Generalized Algebraic Modeling System. The GAMS website contains a useful introduction to the system, and a users’ guide and short tutorial are available at the GAMS documentation webpage. Code for the DICE model, including an Excel version, are available at Nordhaus’ website, and we hope to code one for Matlab.

The class meets for two hours per week but there will be a significant amount of work outside of class. The class is designed for second-year MESM students and PhD students. There are a number of readings, which will be hyperlinked in the course webpage, and there is one required text:

William D. Nordhaus, Managing the Global Commons (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1994), available from Amazon.

Your grade will be based on class participation and on homework assignments posted most weeks. There are no exams.

Schedule and Readings

Jan 12	Background on climate problem	Weart 2005 IPCC 2001 CNN1997	Charlie/Jeff D
Jan 19	Climate policy	Nordhaus ch 1 & 2 Nordhaus 2001	Mihoyo/Todd
Jan 26 Feb 2	One-dimensional climate modeling	Nordhaus ch 3 Dingman 2002	Annie/David
Feb 9	Costs and benefits of mitigation of greenhouse gases	Nordhaus ch 4 Nordhaus 1998 Hansen 2005	Nick/Jeff B
Feb 16	No class
Feb 23	Putting it all together – DICE	Nordhaus ch 5	Yi
Mar 2	Precipitation and snowmelt	Coquard 2004 Barnett 2005	Laura
Mar 9	Glaciers, sea level and other topics	Alley 2003 Emanuel 2005	Carla
Mar 16	Discounting	Tóth 2000	Jerry/Dan

Bibliography

Alley, R. B., J. Marotzke, W. D. Nordhaus, J. T. Overpeck, D. M. Peteet, R. A. Pielke Jr., R. T. Pierrehumbert, R. B. Rhines, T. F. Stocker, L. D. Talley, and J. M. Wallace, Abrupt climate change, Science, 299(5615), 2005-2010 doi: 10.1126/science.1081056, 2003.

Barnett, T. P., J. C. Adam, and D. L. Lettenmaier, Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions, Nature, 438, 303-309 doi:10.1038/nature04141, 2005.

CNN, Text of the Kyoto Protocol, 1997.

Coquard, J., P. B. Duffy, K. E. Taylor, and J. P. Iorio, Present and future surface climate in the western USA as simulated by 15 global climate models, Climate Dynamics, 23(5), 455-472, doi: 10.1007/s00382-004-0437-6, 2004.

Dingman, S. L., Climate, the hydrologic cycle, soils, and vegetation: a global overview, Physical Hydrology, 2^nd Edition, chapter 3, 2002.

Emanuel, K. A., Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years, Nature, 436, 686-688, doi: 10.1038/nature03906, 2005

Hansen, J. E., A slippery slope: how much global warming constitutes 'dangerous anthropogenic interference'? Climatic Change, 68(3), 269-279, doi: 10.1007/s10584-005-4135-0, 2005.

IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, 2001 (also see the IPCC homepage).

Nordhaus, W. D., Climate change: global warming economics, Science, 294(5545), 1283-1284, doi: 10.1126/science.1065007, 2001.

Nordhaus, W. D., New estimates on the economic impacts of climate change, Yale University Working Paper, 1998 (separate link for tables and figures).

Tóth, F. L., Intergenerational equity and discounting, Integrated Assessment, 1(2), 127-136, doi: 10.1023/A:1019123630345, 2000.

Weart, S., The Discovery of Global Warming, 2005 (read the Introduction: A hyperlinked history of climate change science).