Climate Change: Impact and Adaptation

Introducing earth's atmosphere and the basic physical mechanism of the Climate System, highlighting the key role of the interaction of earth's surface and atmosphere with long and short wave radiation.
Presenting the complexity of the climate systems highlighting a number of natural and anthropic factors that can affect earth's energy balance. Particular emphasis is naturally given to the factors that have been most relevant for climate change in the last decades.
Presenting observational and scenario data highlighting current and expected climate change.
Presenting tools to quantify climate change impacts on agricultural productions. This part of the course will be largely based on mathematical models simulating crop growth and development as a function of environmental variables and biotic/a-biotic stressors.
Discussing the use of simulation models to identify adaptation strategies in case of negative impact of climate change. Adaptation strategies will deal with changes/improvement in agro-management practices and in the in silico design and evaluation of plant types more suited to the climate conditions expected in the coming decades.

At the end of the course, students must first understand the basic elements of Earth's radiative and energetic budgets. Then they must be aware on how much Earth's climate has changed in the last century and on how much it is projected to change in the next decades. Students must then learn using tools to quantify climate change impacts on agricultural productions and understand how adaption strategies can be managed.