PHY 392S
Physics of Climate
Home Page for Spring Term 2011

Information Lecture Notes Additional Materials Problem Sets Tests Physics Resources

• PHY392 General Information
• University of Toronto Academic Success Centre
• University of Toronto Counselling & Psychological Services
• University of Toronto Guidelines on "How Not to Plagiarize"
• PHY392S Supplementary Course Notes (114 pages)

• Lecture 1 - Monday, January 10
  • IPCC Summary for Policymakers from Working Group I of the 4th Assessment Report - Week 1 assignment - Read this!
• Lecture 2 - Wednesday, January 12
• Lecture 3 - Monday, January 17
  • Lynch and Soffer, On the solar spectrum and the color sensitivity of the eye, Optics and Photonics News, 1999.
• Lecture 4 - Wednesday, January 19
  • The Snowball Earth website
• Lecture 5 - Monday, January 24
  • Lean & Rind, Climate Forcing by Changing Solar Radiation, Journal of Climate, 11, 3069, 1998
• Lecture 6 - Wednesday, January 26
• Lecture 7 - Monday, January 31
  • Fourier, General Remarks on the Temperature of the Terrestrial Globe and the Planetary Space, 1824
  • Arrhenius, On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Globe, 1896
  • Callendar, The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and its Influence on Temperature, 1938
  • American Institute of Physics - History of the Discovery of the Greenhouse Effect
• Lecture 8 - Wednesday, February 2
• Lecture 9 - Monday, February 7
  • Kopp & Lean, A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L01706, 2011
  • Tollefson, Probe keeps keen eye on Sun, Nature, 469, 457, 27 January 2011, news item on Glory mission and Kopp&Lean paper
  • Perrin, Whose Absorption Law? Journal of the Optical Society of America, 38, 72, 1948
• Lecture 10 - Wednesday, February 9
• Lecture 11 - Monday, February 14
• Lecture 12 - Wednesday, February 16
• Lecture 13 - Monday, February 28
• Lecture 14 - Monday, March 7
• Lecture 15 - Wednesday, March 9
• Lecture 16 - Monday, March 14
• Lecture 17 - Wednesday, March 16
• Lecture 18 - Monday, March 21 - no slides
• Lecture 19 - Wednesday, March 23
• Lecture 20 - Monday, March 28
  • AWI press release about record Arctic ozone loss this year
  • Arctic ozone loss calculations, including data from Eureka
  • 2011 Canadian Arctic ACE Validation Campaign Home Page
• Lecture 21 - Wednesday, March 30
  • Levitus et al., Warming of the world ocean, Science, 287, 2225-2229, 2001
  • Levitus et al., Anthropogenic warming of Earth's climate system, Science, 292, 267-270, 2000
• Lecture 22 - Monday, April 4
• Lecture 23 - Wednesday, April 6

• The Basics of Climate Prediction from the Oxford University Begbroke Science Park - Week 1 suggestion - Try this!
• IPCC Home Page
• IPCC Working Group I: The Physics Science Basis
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
• The Kyoto Protocol
• CBC "In Depth" Kyoto Protocol Website
• RealClimate "Climate science from climate scientists" Website
• New Scientist Climate Change Website
• Environment Canada's Climate Change Website
• "From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate 2007" (Canada's National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation)

• Problem Set #1 - handed out on January 24, due in class on February 7
• Problem Set #1 Solutions - password protected

• Problem Set #2 - handed out on February 14, due in class on February 28
• Problem Set #2 Solutions - password protected

• Problem Set #3 - handed out on March 7, due in class on March 21
• Problem Set #3 Solutions - password protected

• Problem Set #4 - handed out on March 23, due in class on April 6
• Problem Set #4 Solutions - password protected

• PHY392 Mid-term Test from 2010
• Solutions to PHY392 Mid-term Test from 2010 - password protected

• List of Equations and Constants for the Mid-Term Test
• Mid-Term Test
• Mid-Term Test Solutions - password protected

• List of Equations and Constants for the Final Exam

Final exams from previous years can be found at the following website:

• University of Toronto Physics Examinations Collection

• Biweekly Centre for Global Change Science Seminars
• Weekly Department of Physics Colloquia
• Undergraduate Physics Students' Computing And Learning Environment (UPSCALE), University of Toronto
• Department of Physics Library, University of Toronto

• Canadian Association of Physicists
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
• Canadian Space Agency
• Environment Canada

• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Physics
• American Meteorological Society
• American Physical Society
• Physics Today magazine

• Institute of Physics
• European Geosciences Union
• European Physical Society
• Physics World magazine

NOTE: Some of the material on this web site is provided in portable data format (PDF). You can read and print PDF files using Acrobat Reader, which can be freely downloaded to your PC from the Adobe Acrobat web site.

Atmospheric Physics Group
Department of Physics
University of Toronto

This web site is maintained by Kimberly Strong.
Last updated September 2011. Links to content removed.