C2: Carbon & Climate

This course explores the carbon cycle on Earth and its role in the climate system. Students will gain a broad overview of the cycling of carbon among the major biogeochemical reservoirs, the terrestrial biosphere (Module 1) and the ocean (Module 2), as well as their exchange with the atmosphere. Major topics include climate variability and change on human, millennial, and geological time scales (Module 3). In Module 4, we will explore perturbations to the carbon cycle from human activities, and how the use of fossil carbon since the industrial revolution has led to profound transformations in the cycling of carbon among land, oceans, and atmosphere and disrupted Earth’s climate.