AOSC has two upper-level courses being offered in the spring with potentially wide appeal and minimal pre-requisites. They both count toward our climate change fluency minor. Could you send them out over the UGST ADVISE list? I've attached a flyer for each course as well.
AOSC365 Climate Change - Cutting through the Noise
This course is designed for the non-scientist to increase their scientific literacy on climate and climate change. We will discuss what "weather" is, why our planet has it, why we need it, and how we have learned to monitor, understand, and predict it. We will discuss the link between climate and weather, how weather prediction informs climate monitoring, what we know about the climate of the Earth, past and present, how we know it, and how that helps inform our perspective on future climate. We will then discuss how weather and climate information is used for decision-making by individuals, businesses, the military, local, state and national government, and what that implies for the scientists who work on these problems.
AOSC375 Introduction to the Blue Ocean (DSNS)
The global ocean is a major component of the Earth System that shapes life on earth, including our weather and climate. We explore the observation-based interdisciplinary science of oceanography, identifying its strong connections to related sciences like meteorology, and geography. We apply this developing understanding to environmental issues such as marine pollution, fish and fisheries, as well as to climate variability and to the changes to the marine environment that are resulting from steadily rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gasses. Focusses include the biogeochemical and physical changes we can observe in the nearby Chesapeake Bay and the coastal waters of Eastern Shore, Maryland.
