Course Syllabus

DIS Logo


SyllabysPhoto_small.jpg

Semester & Location:

SU2 2019 - DIS Copenhagen

Type & Credits:

Core Course - 3 Credits

Core Course Study Tours:

Arctic Norway (Svalbard)

Major Disciplines:

Environmental Science, Geography, Geology

Faculty Members:

Inger Kathrine Seierstad

Program Director:

Neringa B. Vendelbo - nb@dis.dk

Time & Place:

F24-403

 

Course Description

This course will provide students with a basic understanding of glaciers, their role in the climate system, and how ice sheets and glaciers act as an archive of past climate change. Glaciers from Svalbard in high Arctic Norway will be used as a case study. As a whole, Svalbard glaciers show a declining mass balance as response to current climate change. The declining trend is projected to continue throughout the 21st century, thus contributing further to global sea level rise. Students will observe this decline first-hand on the study tour and will work in depth with glaciological data in class.

In order to contextualize the observed current climate change, lectures will describe the natural climate variability of the past. Ice cores drilled from glaciers and ice sheets have proven to give valuable insights of past climate. While Svalbard ice cores can provide information on local and regional climate for the past millennium, Greenland and Antarctic ice cores reveal hemispheric and global climate signals back to 800 k years before present. In this course, we will delve into how stable isotopes of ice can be used to infer past atmospheric temperatures, and we will discuss the driving forces and feedbacks of the climate system.

A significant part of the course will consist of student projects, where students will be performing data analysis of climate time series from the Svalbard region to explore how Svalbard and its glaciers respond to the current warming climate. Students will use evidence of past climate change in order to contextualize Svalbard’s current and future climate in a regional and global perspective.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course you will be able to

  • Explain the role of glaciers in the climate system
  • Understand what controls the mass balance of a glacier
  • Perform simple data analysis of climate time series
  • Explain how stable isotopes of ice can be used as a proxy for past temperatures and how ice cores are dated
  • Have basic understanding of climate forcings and feedbacks

Faculty

MSc in Geology-Geophysics (University of Copenhagen). Educated within glaciology at Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute. Research on ice cores, past climate change, volcanic deposits in ice, stable isotopes and stratigraphic dating of ice cores. Participated in ice-core drillings in Greenland and Antarctica multiple times. With DIS since 2019.

Readings

All readings are provided by DIS. Please pick up the main textbook during the arrival workshop. All other readings are available through the Canvas course page. Main readings come from the following sources:

Main text book:

Ruddiman: Earth’s Climate Past and Future, 3rd edition, 2014

Other required texts:

AMAP: AMAP Climate Change Update 2019: An Update to Key Findings of Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) 2017, 2019.

Benn and Evans: Glaciers and Glaciations, 2nd edition, 2010

Dallmann (ed.): Geoscience Atlas of Svalbard, 2015

Divine et al.: Thousand years of winter surface air temperature variations in Svalbard and northern Norway reconstructed from ice-core data, Polar Research, 30:1, 2011

Hambrey and Alean: Glaciers, 2nd edition, 2004.

Hanssen-Bauer (ed.): Climate in Svalbard 2100 – a knowledge base for climate adaptation, 2019

IPCC: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR5WG1), 2013

Isaksson et al.: Ice cores from Svalbard––useful archives of past climate and pollution history, 2003

Knight: Glaciers, 1999.

Mudelsee: Trend analysis of climate time series: A review of methods, Earth-Science Reviews, Vol. 190, p. 310-322, 2019.

Nordli et al.: Long-term temperature trends and variability on Spitsbergen: the extended Svalbard Airport temperature series, 1898–2012, Polar Research, 33:1, 2014

Taylor: An Introduction to Error Analysis, 2nd edition, 1997

 

Additional texts may include:

Jouzel et al.: Orbital and Millennial Antarctic Climate Variability over the Past 800,000 Years, Science, Vol. 317, Issue 5839, pp. 793-796, 2007

Nature News Feature, A Sea Change, Nature, Vol. 439, p. 256–260, 2006

NGRIP members: High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period, Nature, Vol. 431, p. 147–151, 2004

 

Format

Lectures, group work, discussions, field studies, student projects and presentations.

Study tour to Arctic Norway (Svalbard)

Students will travel to the archipelago Svalbard in Arctic Norway, where you will study glaciers first-hand. You will travel up on a glacier close to Longyearbyen, go on a boat trip to see a glacier front in one of Svalbard's many fjords, watch arctic wildlife and walk in the streets of an abandoned Russian mining town. We will interact with local researchers who monitor Svalbard’s glaciers and climate, visit a satellite station and explore the culture and history of Svalbard.

Evaluation

To be eligible for a passing grade in this class you must complete all of the assigned work. The overall grade will come from the following:

Participation (20%): Students are expected to participate in all classes and field studies. Furthermore, active participation in class is required in order to get a good grade for participation. Examples of active student participation: volunteer to sum up key points from last class (2-3 min), ask questions about readings, lectures etc., start and/or participate in class discussions relating to the subjects treated.

Arctic Norway study tour assignment (30%): A selection of questions and assignments to be carried out during the five-day study tour to Svalbard, Arctic Norway. The study tour assignment is designed to contextualize the experiences in Svalbard with the course material in general and the student projects in particular.

Student Project (50%): Student projects will be carried out in small groups. Each group will choose a subject and analyze available ice-core data and glaciological data to investigate this subject and make climatic interpretations. The final product consists of 1) a poster prepared by the project group, 2) a group presentation of the poster, and 3) an individually written synopsis of the project. Required elements of each project is that students familiarize themselves with the data and methods they are using, and that students give a thorough description of the climatic interpretation and the assumptions and mechanisms it is based on.

Course Summary:

Date Details Due