How to complete the assignment:
In this assignment, you will use data developed by computer models, provided by paleoclimatic proxy sources, and recorded by meteorological instruments to write a history of climate change in a community.
Visit ClimateTippingPoints.com. You will find a map covered by blue and red dots. Every dot links to a short article, most written by Georgetown students, that either describes how past climate change has influenced the history of a particular place, or how projected climate change will affect that place. Blue dots link to articles about the past (after all, it was colder then); red dots link to articles about the future.
You will write an article that explains how a community has coped with climate change in the past. You may choose any community, anywhere in the world, but you'll find that it's easier to write about a county or city in the United States. And please avoid writing about a location that's already covered by a dot and article on our website.
And yes: it’s okay to write about the very recent past - you don't have to write about the Little Ice Age.
When you’ve chosen a community, begin by visiting the “Tools” section of the website. Here, I’ve given you a selection of credible, accessible applications and programs that should allow you to easily reconstruct the history of global, regional, and local temperature and precipitation. Most of these tools are suited only for reconstructing climate in American counties and cities, so again: it is easier to write about the United States.
Many of these tools will be useful for you, but in my experience NOAA’s “State Annual and Seasonal Time Series” and “Sea Level Trends” websites are especially helpful for reconstructing local and regional climatic trends. If you decide to write about a community beyond the United States, the Carbon Brief "Mapped" tool is among the most useful. Note that you may have to play around with these tools to figure out how to use them.
You will use these tools to explain, first, how climate change has altered the local environment of one of those counties or cities; second, how we know that climate change has had such an influence; and third, how the consequences of climate change for local environments affected peoples’ lives. The articles already on the website should give you a template for how to write these three parts of your assignment.
Using the tools I’ve provided, you should be able to obtain at least two maps or graphs that represent climatic trends in a particular place. Please include them in your assignment, and explain how they were made. For the third part of your assignment, some tools might be helpful, but you will likely need to bring in additional information from newspapers, scholarly articles, or government websites. You might have to do some research to find those sources; note that Georgetown's Lauinger Library and the Library of Congress both have newspaper archives that you can use.
Don't use Chicago-style formatting! Instead, add links to the tools you used in the second section of your articles, which is devoted to "how we know." If you used additional sources - newspaper articles, for example - create a new subsection called "Further Reading," and link to them there. Consult the articles already on the Tipping Points website to learn how to do it.
With your consent, I will edit the most suitable (not necessarily the best) articles I receive and publish them on the Tipping Points website, which currently receives around 50,000 hits a year. Our goal is to educate people about the impact of past, present, and future climate change in their community. You should therefore avoid jargon and clearly explain how climatic trends have altered local environments.
Visit ClimateTippingPoints.com. You will find a map covered by blue and red dots. Every dot links to a short article, most written by Georgetown students, that either describes how past climate change has influenced the history of a particular place, or how projected climate change will affect that place. Blue dots link to articles about the past (after all, it was colder then); red dots link to articles about the future.
You will write an article that explains how a community has coped with climate change in the past. You may choose any community, anywhere in the world, but you'll find that it's easier to write about a county or city in the United States. And please avoid writing about a location that's already covered by a dot and article on our website.
And yes: it’s okay to write about the very recent past - you don't have to write about the Little Ice Age.
When you’ve chosen a community, begin by visiting the “Tools” section of the website. Here, I’ve given you a selection of credible, accessible applications and programs that should allow you to easily reconstruct the history of global, regional, and local temperature and precipitation. Most of these tools are suited only for reconstructing climate in American counties and cities, so again: it is easier to write about the United States.
Many of these tools will be useful for you, but in my experience NOAA’s “State Annual and Seasonal Time Series” and “Sea Level Trends” websites are especially helpful for reconstructing local and regional climatic trends. If you decide to write about a community beyond the United States, the Carbon Brief "Mapped" tool is among the most useful. Note that you may have to play around with these tools to figure out how to use them.
You will use these tools to explain, first, how climate change has altered the local environment of one of those counties or cities; second, how we know that climate change has had such an influence; and third, how the consequences of climate change for local environments affected peoples’ lives. The articles already on the website should give you a template for how to write these three parts of your assignment.
Using the tools I’ve provided, you should be able to obtain at least two maps or graphs that represent climatic trends in a particular place. Please include them in your assignment, and explain how they were made. For the third part of your assignment, some tools might be helpful, but you will likely need to bring in additional information from newspapers, scholarly articles, or government websites. You might have to do some research to find those sources; note that Georgetown's Lauinger Library and the Library of Congress both have newspaper archives that you can use.
Don't use Chicago-style formatting! Instead, add links to the tools you used in the second section of your articles, which is devoted to "how we know." If you used additional sources - newspaper articles, for example - create a new subsection called "Further Reading," and link to them there. Consult the articles already on the Tipping Points website to learn how to do it.
With your consent, I will edit the most suitable (not necessarily the best) articles I receive and publish them on the Tipping Points website, which currently receives around 50,000 hits a year. Our goal is to educate people about the impact of past, present, and future climate change in their community. You should therefore avoid jargon and clearly explain how climatic trends have altered local environments.
An important tip:
Once they've figured out how to use one or more of the tools listed on the Tipping Points website, most students find that there are two ways to write these articles. They can find significant trends or anomalies in (most often) temperature or precipitation by using the tools, and then search for evidence that these trends or anomalies influenced a community. Alternatively, they can find evidence for the impact of a severe weather event in a community, and then use those tools to link the weather event - a devastating hurricane, for example - to a climatic trend.
Common challenges:
Try to avoid mixing content between subsections. In other words, if you're trying to explain how climate change altered a local environment, avoid mentioning human responses.
It's important not only to explain what has happened, but also how and why. In other words: think deeply about causation. It's not enough to write, for example, that hurricanes have grown more severe. Instead, briefly explain how anthropogenic climate change has likely increased the frequency of severe hurricanes.
It's also important to avoid beginning your article with overly broad or vague statements about, say, the global consequences of climate change. Assume that your reader will already understand that the world is warming, and that it's serious - but that they have little understanding about how global trends have had, or will have, local consequences. Stay focused on your community!
For the third subsection - on the consequences of climate change for human lives - it's fine to emphasize destructive impacts. But also, you may want to think about the unequal impacts of climate change within communities, and about sources of resilience and adaptation.
Lastly, if you have to use some jargon - a technical term, for example - always clearly define it for your reader when you use it for the first time.
It's important not only to explain what has happened, but also how and why. In other words: think deeply about causation. It's not enough to write, for example, that hurricanes have grown more severe. Instead, briefly explain how anthropogenic climate change has likely increased the frequency of severe hurricanes.
It's also important to avoid beginning your article with overly broad or vague statements about, say, the global consequences of climate change. Assume that your reader will already understand that the world is warming, and that it's serious - but that they have little understanding about how global trends have had, or will have, local consequences. Stay focused on your community!
For the third subsection - on the consequences of climate change for human lives - it's fine to emphasize destructive impacts. But also, you may want to think about the unequal impacts of climate change within communities, and about sources of resilience and adaptation.
Lastly, if you have to use some jargon - a technical term, for example - always clearly define it for your reader when you use it for the first time.
