TA Climate Systems Course
Undergraduate course, Columbia University, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, 2026
I am a teaching assistant for an introductory climate systems course. My job is to hold office hours, lead lab sessions, and update course materials as needed (this last part of the job is especially large this year, since a major source of our data was recently defunded).
Course topics
- Solar radiation and Earth’s energy balance
- Earth’s radiation budget and the greenhouse effect
- Spatial distribution of radiation and cloud forcing and feedbacks
- Atmospheric thermodynamics (convection)
- Moisture and cloud formation
- Atmospheric forces, balances, and winds
- Extratropical weather systems
- Weather forecasting
- Tropical cyclones and hurricanes
- General atmospheric circulation and climate zones
- Wind-driven ocean circulation
- Ocean-atmosphere interaction
- El Niño Southern Oscillation
- ENSO impacts and other modes of climate variability
- Deep ocean circulation
- Ocean simulation/tank experiments
- Ocean chemistry and productivity
- CO2 and ocean acidification
- Ocean nutrients and biology
- Carbon cycle
- Climate change: instrumental record and climate forcing
- Paleoclimate records and analysis, especially ice cores
- Polar regions and climate change
- Field trip to Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
- Projections and impacts of climate change
- Discussion and analysis of IPCC report
- IPCC mock negotiations
- Mitigation and adaptation options for climate change