Science & Math

Understanding Climate Change Science

Read the physics, the data and the IPCC's own language well enough to judge any climate claim you meet.

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What you will learn about Understanding Climate Change Science

The 7-day sprint
  1. Earth Runs An Energy Budget. Earth warms when it absorbs more energy from the sun than it radiates back to space, so climate change is first and last an accounting problem about energy.
  2. Greenhouse Gases And Radiative Forcing. Greenhouse gases absorb and re-emit infrared radiation, and the size of their effect on the energy budget is quantified as radiative forcing in W m-2.
  3. Reading The Keeling Curve. The atmospheric carbon dioxide record is a direct, continuously calibrated measurement with a seasonal wiggle riding on a relentless upward trend.
  4. Anomalies, Baselines And The Temperature Record. Global temperature is reported as an anomaly relative to a stated baseline period, so a number without its baseline is meaningless.
  5. Where The Heat Actually Goes. More than ninety percent of the excess heat ends up in the ocean, which is why surface temperature alone is a noisy and lagging indicator of the energy imbalance.
  6. Feedbacks And Climate Sensitivity. Feedbacks amplify the initial forcing, and their net strength is summarized by two numbers: equilibrium climate sensitivity for the long run and transient climate response for this century.
  7. Scenarios, Budgets And Calibrated Language. IPCC projections are conditional explorations of possible futures written in a calibrated vocabulary, so reading them correctly means reading the scenario and the probability word together.
The 80/20: the 6 concepts that matter most
  • The Earth Energy Imbalance
  • Carbon Dioxide As The Control Knob
  • Radiative Forcing As A Common Currency
  • Feedbacks And Climate Sensitivity
  • Anomalies, Baselines And Convergent Datasets
  • Reading Scenarios And Calibrated Language
The core idea, explained like you are 5

Earth stays at a steady temperature only when it radiates away as much energy as it receives from the sun, and greenhouse gases slow the outgoing side, so energy builds up until the planet is warm enough to balance the books again.

Then the quiz and the ladder

10 questions that correct you when you are wrong, and beginner, intermediate, advanced levels, each with a practical exercise.

Created Sep 13, 2026. No mistakes have been reported by learners.

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