The course is designed to understand the main tools for observing and simulating the climatic system, and how acquired knowledges by the scientific community are linked to major social debates. The course includes a phase of initial courses, a phase of lectures by external speakers, but also a more personal bibliographic work. The latter is designed to confront each student with an open scientific problem with socio-political implications, and to show the difficulty and requirement of the expert diagnosis that the scientist may have to give. This work phase will start sooner than the other years. It is conclued by a collective session of lectures during the last session, which will be a debate this year.
The climatical system is part of more complex natural systems. It includes (atmosphere, ocean, rivers), but also slowly deforbable solids (large glaciers, surface layers of soil). All these elements are in interacion, under the effect of physical, chemical or biological processes.
These systems evolve naturally and these evolutions, sometimes organized, sometimes chaotic, are revealed on all time scales by quite different mechanisms: scale of the planet's history (continenetal drift, modification of atmospherical chemistry by life development), scale of Quaternary (variations of astronomical origin), or scale of last centuries or millennia (volcanism intensity fluctuation of the solar flux, coupling between atmosphere and ocean, ...). Furthermore, from the 70s the scientific community became aware of increasing risks that climate change will also be caused by human activities, from soil erosion (suspected of contributing to recurrent droughts in the Sahel) to the increase in greenhouse gases or aerosols. International research programs were established in the 80s to try to distinguish between evolution linked to human activities and natural evolution - and anticipate future risks linked to these evolutions. The tools of these researchs are associated to the digital modeling (tool for understanding and forecasting, which takes on a particularly complex form here), and a coordinated observation effort (with the establishment over 30 years of an international system combining ground-based measurements and satellite observations).
A non-limitative list of subject that students can choose for their personal work: volcanism role, climatic evolution at different time scales on a given area, characterization of the rise in ocean level, biosphere role in future evolutions, etc... Topics are suggested, but students are free to make a more personal choice. Each subject will be covered first through research articles in English, then put in situation regarding more general social issues. This process is guided by appointments with the teacher.
Numerus clausus: no numerus clausus, but above 14 the acceptation will take a time (request a second is necessary supervisor)
Course language: French
- Teaching coordinator: Dubos Thomas
- Teaching coordinator: Kotthaus Simone