Climate Change in 4 Dimensions

From April 8 2104 till June 17 I participated in online course

www.coursera.org

Climate Change in 4 Dimensions
University of San Diego.

Overal I learnt a lot about climate change beyond the science aspects

During the course I kept notes to provide some feedback and ideas for improvement.
I captured this in this post.

Lecture 5

Early part is very US centric 

Global Average Warming Chart after Ocean Acidification and Coral , the text is to small to read.

Lecture 6

Very informative and enjoyable, Professor David G. Victor engaged me well.Introduced Stock Problem Economic model to me. Already introducing new ideas to my thoughts

Lecture 9

Weekly activity
Survey is USA oriented. Of course the US should act independent of other countries. The question for me is should Australia act independent of other countries.

This weeks graded quiz was not up to scratch. Usually only one or none of the question are badly worded, easily to be misunderstood, or difficult to attribute to any of the reading or lectures. This week multiple questions including.
Question 8 , 9. difficult to understand/read. 
"Heat waves and heavy precipitation" is not a trend.    

Lecture 10

Feedback: 
Slide from Rogell, Meinshausen 2012 is out of date, wrong name inconsistent with other slides. 
Chaparral is not a common international word, and is not what would grow in Australia. 
Question in the ungraded quiz unclear

Based on global climate models, what regions will see the biggest precipitation increase with global warming?

northern

western

southern

eastern

This question is about North America, Not clear

Concepts

Uses indices to show warming particular in USA, definitely regional/spatial
Indices

• Mean annual temperature
• Number of cold days
• Number of hot days
• Agricultural Based - frost, super hot days, frost free (growing season) forecast.
• Keeling curve shows growing season has increased by about 10 days, in agreement with ag-models

Heat Wave

• Multiple factors some of which more common due to CC
• Europe 2003, 2006, Australia 2009 (Karoly), Russia 2010, USA 2009

Models don't seem to capture very cold days. 

Midterm

Question 7 unclear
If someone makes a prediction, and it comes true, does that mean that the prediction is correct?
does it mean hypothesis or prediction is true?

Question 9 
Debatable if one or more answers are correct

Week 8 

Lecture 14 
Ice, snow and water
Does NOT mention ice West antarctica Ice Shelf info?
Projections continue to change with increasing understanding?
Parts of the lecture are dating quickly.

Lecture 15
Very directed to a Californian Audience. The level of knowledge about geography of California was assumed to be higher than my own, though I have travelled there.  Think this would exclude some of the coursera audience.

Quiz  Question 9

"Please fill in the blank: By 2050, the number of ‘extremely hot’ days could increase ________."

This statement was not in the lecture notes, so how does one know what location of study to cite? Does it it relate to global, USA, California, San Diego, or Australia extremely hot days.?

Lecture 19

Spelling mistake in the "Check your knowledge quiz" question 4
Arpanet