Climate Physics and Chemistry
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this introduction to the physical and chemical processes that govern Earth's climate, spanning the formation of the solar system through the timescales of geological and human history. The course examines the atmosphere, oceans, and ice as interacting systems, covering radiative balance, greenhouse gases, and the feedbacks that drive climate change over different timescales. Materials include lecture notes, problem sets, and readings drawn from MIT's Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department, with separate requirements for undergraduate and graduate students, the latter typically including an additional research component. The course is free to access under MIT's open license, with no certificate offered. It suits students who want a quantitative grounding in climate science rather than a policy-focused overview, building from basic physics and chemistry toward the mechanisms behind past and present climate shifts.