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Provenance: Eli Maynard
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Summary of the Session: During this workshop session we will discuss how proxies are used to deduce what the climate was like prior to the availability of instruments to measure temperature, precipitation, humidity and other parameters. Particular attention will be paid to climate changes of the past 1 million years, 10,000 years, and 200 years. We will also examine a lab exercise for students to develop and test hypotheses about climatic changes in Saharan Africa over the past 9000 years using NASA satellite images and lake sediment data. The lab exercise is provided as a separate document.

Background: This 90-minute session is part of a four-day workshop that brought together faculty from multiple colleges and diverse disciplines to work collaboratively on developing new and revised courses, explore engaged learning pedagogies, and add to their knowledge for interdisciplinary teaching about climate change within a liberal arts curriculum. The workshop was held twice on the campus of Dickinson College, first in summer 2010 and again in summer 2011. Participants came from more than 20 colleges and universities and with expertise in disciplines that span the sciences, social sciences and humanities. The workshops are part of a NASA supported project Cooling the Liberal Arts Curriculum, A Campaign for Climate Change Education (Cooling the Curriculum ).

Also see teaching materials.