currently, the world is experiencing a remarkable change with warming as the main feature, which profoundly affects the survival and development of human beings and is a major challenge faced by the international community today. the international scientific community has been deepening its understanding of climate change and its interaction with human activities to provide the scientific basis and decision-making basis for addressing climate change. joint adaptation and mitigation of climate change through cooperation and dialogue has become a broad consensus among all countries in the world, involving profound changes in global economic and social development, a major task to achieve the un sustainable development goals, and a matter of long-term interests of all mankind. the scientific and proper response to climate change and the active promotion of achieving the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality are the important embodiment of the spirit and rich connotation of socialist thought with chinese characteristics in the new era, as well as the inevitable requirement of furthering the construction of ecological civilization.
the course "introduction to climate change science" is co-taught by academician qin dahe, who leads the ipcc chinese author team. the lecturers are all young and middle-aged scholars engaged in scientific research on climate change, including academicians of the chinese academy of sciences, chief scientists of major national research projects, outstanding young scholars and changjiang scholars, and other outstanding scientists. the course follows the modern version of the scientific definition of climate change, starting from the natural science basis of climate change, and focusing on the latest achievements and progress in climate change facts, attribution and prediction, climate change impact and adaptation, climate change mitigation and sustainable development, as well as international negotiations on climate change and china's emission reduction actions, and the future direction of development, the goal is to cultivate high-level talents with independent thinking ability, teamwork ability, international vision, global perspective, critical and critical thinking ability, and multidisciplinary interdisciplinary way of thinking.
in the spring semester of 2023, under the invitation of lanzhou university college of earth and environmental sciences department of earth system science, and the organization of professor mu cuicui, the course leader, "introduction to climate change science" was offered as a postgraduate disciplinary frontier and interdisciplinary course, course number 409133006, which is a professional elective course with 32 class periods, and was taught offline every tuesday morning (8:30-10:10) at the guanyun building of lanzhou university chengguan campus. the course is taught offline in the guanyun building on tuesday mornings (8:30-10:10). the students enrolled in the course include ph.d. and m.s. majors in earth system science, physical geography, cartography and gis, etc. the course also attracts teachers and students who are engaged in research in various disciplines, and the course is widely welcomed.
figure 1 expert profile
at the beginning of the course, academician qin dahe opened the first chapter of the course, giving an in-depth introduction to the concept of climate change science, its development history and the latest progress of ipcc, and calling attention to the future earth program. in the course that followed, in the subsequent courses, the lecturing team instructors combined climate change research progress and national policies to provide systematic lectures on observed climate system changes, ocean and cryosphere changes, holocene climate change, biogeochemical cycles, aerosols and clouds, anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing, climate change detection and attribution, climate system models and climate change prediction, climate phenomena and related regional climate changes, socio-economic development pathways and climate change scenarios, climate change impacts, vulnerability and resilience, extreme events and disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development, international climate change negotiations and china's mitigation actions. at the same time, the lecturers also held in-depth discussions with the students and faculty on the current frontier progress of climate change and related issues, and gave specific advice to the students on their scientific research related to climate change, which significantly promoted their understanding of theories, phenomena and methods related to climate change, and enhanced their awareness of actively paying attention to global climate change and countermeasures.
figure 2 expert lecture site
through the process of "listening to face-to-face lectures by experts and answering questions with experts on site", students benefited a lot. through a semester of systematic study, the course "introduction to climate change science" has achieved remarkable results and has been widely praised by students and teachers. the course helped our students and faculty gain the latest cutting-edge knowledge of ipcc on climate change science, understand the latest progress of current climate change research and the focus and hot issues, broaden their international perspective, academic thinking, global concept, the scientific spirit of scientists who are rigorous and pragmatic, and the ability of interdisciplinary thinking, and lay a solid foundation for their future research work in the field of climate change. at the same time, the course has also established the concept of green mountain is the silver mountain, and strengthened the students' awareness of respecting nature and green development. through this course, we will demonstrate and drive the construction of frontier and cross-disciplinary courses in the university, realize the internal construction and development of the course, and better play the role of course education, so as to provide strong support for the smooth implementation of our talent cultivation strategy.
