Recent Courses Taught by Klaus Keller

Courses: 

EARTH 002 - The Earth System and Global Change (3) An interdisciplinary introduction to the processes, interactions and evolution of the earth's biosphere, geosphere and hydrosphere.

GEOSC 597C – Climate Change (3) A class analyzing the current knowledge (and research needs) relevant to the climate system in the past and possible futures. Topics to be covered include theories for glacial-interglacial cycles, modes of climate variability, abrupt climate change, anthropogenic climate change, probabilistic projections of future climate change, climate change impacts, and climate risk management.

GEOSC 597C - Data Analysis in the Earth Sciences (3) Earth Scientists often analyze questions that defy the typical simplifying assumptions used in introductory statistics courses.  For example, the number of observations may be small and the observation errors may not follow a normal distribution.  Furthermore, the model may be nonlinear or there are several possible models to analyze the observations.  Finally, information gathered at one (e.g., the laboratory) scale has to be used in the analysis at a different (e.g., global) scale.  These issues can be addressed using a few, and relatively easy to understand, statistical methods. This course will introduce advanced statistical methods in a problem centered, hands-on way.  We will analyze and apply these methods using example problems typically encountered in the earth sciences.  Examples will be taken from ongoing research projects of the students as well as the published literature.  The analyzed problems will cover fields such as biogeochemistry, microbiology, paleobotany, paleoclimatology, or climatic change. Students will learn (i) how to choose and apply modern data analysis methods, (ii) how to address specific challenges posed by many data analysis problems in the earth sciences, and (iii) to identify promising research projects that are enabled by the increasing ease to implement advanced statistical techniques.