Dr. David Archer has succeeded in presenting a didactic course in which complex issues like climate and weather conditions are explained in a highly schematic and clear manner for students who do not have an academic degree in either Earth sciences or physics. The series of short video's show Dr. Archer at the blackboard explaining concepts using highly schematic and easy to understand figures. Teaching in the most elementary way, almost perfect.

Completing this course also is learning by practice: there are multiple problems to solve using a wide array of models that compute the impact of greenhouse gases on temperature, humidity, ice sheets and sea levels. Finally a series of assignments require the student to explain in simple terms 'that can be understood by an 11-yr old' what are basic concepts like heat, negative feedback, fossil fuels, climate change and others. An interesting approach.

Together, this is a recommended course for anyone interested in the science behind one of the most discussed changes of our planet. A Minor comment is that the videos would benefit by some change of perspective, introducing here and there images or video's that illustrate the impact of climate change on Earth systems.

Thanks to this course, I have learnt many other aspects of environmental science. Although professors' course content was enough, I preferred to study more about each topic because environmental topics are diverse and intense, I recommend that. It may not create a new job opportunity, but it will have been sure developed my point of view. Peer-reviewed assignments actually good, but it was difficult to be reviewed. Reviewing other's assignments were really constructive as you can see other's point of view which some of them were superb. The duration of the course is also pretty long, 12 weeks, to study it as a subtask. On the discussion section, there is no control from the instructors, you are on your own. Frankly, there is not much qualified chatting on the discussion part either for questions or topics, everyone usually asks for the review. Therefore, although the course is excellent, there is no control and you are on your own.

Interesting and topical material, but it doesn't seem like this course is moderated by the professor any longer. I wish there was more discussion around the models; its great to know how they work, but some more targeted interpretation of the results in the model exercises would have been really helpful. There is also room to update the course with some information on our current status as a global society with respect to climate change. Because it's seemingly not moderated, some folks tend to try and push through in an unethical way, for example by asking for 'good' feedback to pass the course quickly, which devalues the efforts of those who are looking to authentically learn the material.

Good points: 1) Great instructor; 2) applicable content; 3) great for physics students.

Bad points: 1) Lacking of a "Formulae booklet" to use as reminder and reference for formulas and constants - when working on the models for this course; 2) The exercises approach should be reviews, making more use of the tools available in the Coursera interface (example: Assigments in text format (discursive) should use the own coursera interface, instead make us upload .TXT or .DOC files).

Extra: I did not finish the course, the format and content do not achieve my personal objectives, as a software developer and environmentalist. But i really enjoyed the general approach and goal.

An eye-opening course on climate and what we all should prepare for. Very well structured and presented, with lots of exercises to test/deepen your understanding

Unfortunately, no help from the instructors on the discussion forums, which leads to a bunch of a very confused students to "guess" the answer sometimes having no idea of what's going on in the model. Clarifying some of the questions from week 8 and perhaps being present on the discussion forums would help a lot.

Excellent lecture for climate change. This lecture give me a deep insight for greenhouse effect and global warming with nice scientific tools and models. However, It's necessary to improve some instruction process to have student understand with more easy. For example, there are various instructions for using models. But sometimes, I have difficulties to understand some model.

Anyhow, I thanks to Dr. David Archer and Coursera staff.

This is a great course for the non-scientist to understand the scientific mechanism and models behind climate change. I requires quite a bit of work but the lecturer explains things extremely well. Overall, some of the quizzes could be better thought through but this is a very good MOOC.

Highly interesting, informative, challenging and time-consuming course, which has some frustrations when it comes to the exercises. I wish it was still maintained to iron out remaining quirks.

There appears to be no statement of accomplishment unless you buy the certificate.

It was a challenging and demanding online course but you also could learn a lot. The videos where not too long and the questions in between were very helpful. For an online course it was very well structured although I missed the personal contact with fellow students.

Excellent course to understand the climate model of the earth. Huge cheers for the professor!! Perhaps the course can include a walkthru of some of the models that have been introduced as part of the course - I found myself lost when a model was suddenly thrown at me

Overall great course. A couple of assignments were unclear as to what was required. Thankfully there is enough discourse in the forms with other students to help put you on the right track.

The slow pace and the simple language helps to comprehend the climate science very effectively. Thanks a lot for that. Use of fundamentals with very little work load per week is fun!

This is an awesome course. I'm introduced to so many new things that I'd hardly get chance of getting knowing. But I feel getting the assignments reviewed is a big headache.

Overall this is a good course. The drawbacks are that there are problems with week formulations of some questions. There is no support from course creators.

Great content and very good teacher! I dont give it 5 stars because there is no teaching staff support at all.

1.Course lectures = very good. Occasionally too brief; more detail should be provided.

I appreciate the coursera .

An overall good course.

Great course!

Very good!

good

Very clear professor, great and approachable explanations, and interesting exercises!

I like the peer-reviewed works which require us to explain a concept to 11-yos.

The video format is a bit hacky though... Two-minute videos don't really achieve much, and I've got to watch several of them anyway to get a full message. So why not have fluid, 10-to-15 minute videos?

Furthermore, the online models are a great tool to illustrate what is seen in class. However, some tools (in particular the Time Series Browser) work really poorly, and I see that the same problems as I have today existed five years ago. So, although these exercises are interesting and educational, they've clearly been forgotten by the teacher himself. This is not a problem as such, but the course could be made a lot better if the feedback of students (found in the forums of the course) were taken into account.

Overall though, I really liked the class!

It is a good course & I am grateful for any one you puts effort into making education available. The -2 stars is due to complete absence of moderators leading to a defunct discussion. Also be aware that there are a lot of peer graded assignments. Which I think work well, but do mean more work than a lot of courses. In addition you must pass all tasks, which meant I actually failed the course by getting the second top mark you can get on the last assignment despite passing all the others (a fair bit of work put in),

The course was a broad overview to different areas of climate science. At the end I understood a little more deeply the mechanics of global warming, but some things could have gone in more depth. I found the quantity of assignments/quizzes to be a bit unmanageable even though some were very short. I really liked the explainer assignments. When I first saw them i thought they were going to be a bit much, but actually they were extremely helpful as they forced me to process the information learned week to week.