Course Descriptions

GEG 204 - Introduction to Climatology

3 Credits

This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding future changes in the Earth’s climate. Students will learn how the Earth’s climate system operates and gain an informed perspective of future global climate change. Topics include measuring changes in greenhouse gases, tools used in modeling and interpreting past climate, ice ages, recent global warming, future climate projections, strategies to potentially slow and stabilize climate change, and the outlook of our future energy use.

GEG 203 completed or concurrently enrolled in

New SUNY General Education: SUNY - Natural Sciences (and Scientific Reasoning)

Retiring SUNY General Education: SUNY-NS - Natural Sciences (SNSC)

*NOTE: This course only meets SUNY General Education requirements when both GEG 204 and GEG 203 are successfully completed.*

MCC General Education: MCC-CT - Critical Thinking (MCT), MCC-SCI - Scientific Reasoning (MSCI)

Course Learning Outcomes
1. Develop trends in time-series data to interpret past and future climate conditions.
2. Describe the Earth’s climate system and its relationship to the Earth's energy budget, atmosphere-circulation patterns, and ocean-circulation patterns.
3. Diagram components of the Earth’s carbon cycle and track the role of carbon as it moves within the climate system.
4. Examine the influence of anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide on climate.
5. Compare and contrast various climate proxies and geologic-age determination techniques.
6. Examine ice-age cycles and the causes of climate change across multiple time scales.
7. Explain the impacts of global warming on the Arctic’s geography, ecology, and human population.
8. Discuss how climate models are used to predict the geographical pattern of future global warming.
9. Predict the feedback loops that might develop from changing conditions in and between different Earth Systems.
10. Classify types of climate according to the Koppen climate classification system.
11. Evaluate the scientific basis used to critique policy issues related to global warming.

Course Offered Fall, Spring

Use links below to see if this course is offered:
Fall Semester 2024
Intersession 2025
Spring Semester 2025