Arctic Specialization
What will you learn in this specialization? Think different definitions of geographic boundaries of the Arctic, characteristics of the Arctic lands and ocean water, how rising temperatures, declining sea ice, and thawing permafrost are affecting the landscape and its people, and how economies and geopolitics are impacted. For example, did you know that many parts of the Arctic are actually forest? Or that the Greenland Ice Sheet contains about 20 feet of potential sea level rise? Or that Russia has the largest icebreaker fleet in the world, which includes nuclear-powered ships? All this and more is discussed within the specialization!
Professor Serreze serves as director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is part of the University of Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). He has taught courses in Arctic climate and environment in the Geography department for well over a decade. He first visited the Arctic in the spring of 1982 as a young graduate student, and since then, has made many trips to the region to research snow, ice caps, glaciers, tundra and sea ice. Over the years, he has personally witnessed the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, as it has transformed from the Arctic of old (that the explorers of the 19th century would have been very familiar with), to a very different place as it rapidly loses snow and ice. Serreze is also the author of, “,” which describes how his experience as a scientist gave him a front row seat to climate change.
