Course Listing

Fundamental concepts, formalisms, and examples of conservation of energy and change in entropy as applied to energy, environmental, and biological systems.

Overview of the basic features of the atmosphere-climate system and the underlying physical processes. The purpose of the course is to on the one hand learn the basic concepts, and on the other hand get exposure to a broad variety of atmospheric and climatic features.

This is a core course in the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program. Launching a successful startup requires a business model that defines the venture's customer value proposition; plans for technology, operations, and marketing; and a formula for eventually earning profit. Students will learn how to design business models that address challenges that technology ventures frequently encounter as they grow and evolve. We will employ system dynamics modeling using simulation software to inform those business model design choices. A team project will investigate business model options for an early-stage startup.

This course will provide students with an introduction to environmental science and engineering by providing an overview of current environmental issues, including climate change, air pollution, and water pollution. Students critically evaluate underlying science and knowledge limitations, and explore the nexus between scientific knowledge, regulatory frameworks, and engineering solutions to some of the world's most pressing environmental problems. The course will emphasize the interconnected biological, geological, and chemical cycles of the earth system including the multi-dimensional impacts of human activity.

This course introduces students to the fluid Earth, emphasizing Earth's weather and climate, the carbon cycle, and global environmental change. The physical concepts necessary for understanding the structure, motion and energy balance of the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere are covered first, and then these concepts are applied in exploring major earth processes. Examples from Earth's past history, on-going changes in the climate, and implications for the future are highlighted.

An introduction to the science of global warming/climate change meant to assist students in understanding issues that often appear in the news and public debates. The course is intended for any STEM student with basic math preparation, yet not requiring any prior science courses. Topics include the greenhouse effect and consequences of the rise of greenhouse gasses, including sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, forest fires, expected changes to hurricanes, glacier melting, ocean acidification, and more. An ability to critically evaluate observations, predictions, risks, and popular press articles will be developed throughout. The students will be guided in a hands-on, in-class quantitative analysis of climate observations, models, and feedbacks using provided Python Jupyter notebooks.

Statistical inference, deterministic and stochastic models of data, model selection, Monte Carlo methods, denoising and filtering, data visualization, and time series analysis. The course emphasizes hands-on learning using real data drawn from atmospheric and environmental observations, applied by students in projects and presentations.

The course provides an overview of Earth’s energy resources, with emphasize on the factors that control their global distributions and uses in our society. Lectures and labs will emphasize methods used to identify and exploit resources, as well as the environmental impact of these operations. Topics include: coal and acid rain; oil & natural gas, photochemical smog, oil spills; unconventional fossil resources (shale gas, tar sands); greenhouse gas emissions and climate; nuclear power and radioactive hazards; solar, hydroelectric, tidal, and geothermal power; energy storage (methane, hydrogen); and key materials (rare earth metals, lithium) required for the energy transition. Labs will emphasize datasets and tools (drilling methods, satellite remote sensing data, and subsurface imaging techniques) for discovering and developing resources, and assessing and mitigating environmental impacts. 

Chemical and physical processes determining the composition of the atmosphere and its implications for air pollution, climate, and life on Earth. Emphasis is on the construction of engineering models and the application of chemical principles to understand and address current environmental issues. Nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon cycles. Climate forcing by greenhouse gases and aerosols. Stratospheric ozone. Oxidizing power of the atmosphere. Methane. Surface air pollution: aerosols and ozone. Deposition to ecosystems: acid rain, nitrogen, mercury.

Is the ocean warming? Where and why is sea level rising? Where does the freshwater from Arctic ice melting go? Using real-world examples, this course will provide an overview of why and how we measure the ocean, focusing primarily on its physical properties. It will cover sensors, instruments and platforms, best field practices in data collection and calibration, fieldwork organization implementation, and ocean data analysis. During the course, students will build, test and calibrate an ocean profiling instrument. Students will participate in a one-day research cruise where they will collect data using both the instruments they built and other traditional oceanographic instruments.

This course will examine the theory and practical application of environmental chemistry and toxicology for assessing the behavior, toxicity and human health risks of chemical contaminants in the environment. The goals of the course are to: (a) illustrate how various sub-disciplines in environmental toxicology are integrated to understand the behavior of pollutants; (b) demonstrate how scientific information is applied to inform environmental management decisions and public policy through several case studies; and (c) provide an introduction to the legislative framework in which environmental toxicology is conducted. This course will be directed toward undergraduate students with a basic understanding of chemistry and calculus and an interest in applied science and engineering to address environmental management problems.

This course is focused on aspects of environmental engineering related to the fate, transport, and control of pollution in surface water ecosystems. Course modules will cover ecological impacts of environmental contaminants; principles of water quality regulations and modeling; surface water aspects of engineering hydrology, including rainfall-runoff relationships; quantitative models of pollutant fate and transport in rivers, lakes, estuaries, and wetlands; best management practices for the prevention and control of nonpoint source pollution; and sustainable natural treatment systems for water quality improvement.

Part 1: Intersection of environment/industry, including decarbonization of the materials industry. Chemistries for cement and steel production without carbon dioxide emission, the smelting industry for extraction of metals from ores, present-day and possible futures for chemistry of a hydrogen economy, and chemistry of emerging battery technologies.

Part 2: Environmental processes of chemistry, such as alkalinity of ocean acidification, pH and pE as master variables for the chemistry of an ecosystem, drinking and wastewater treatment, and soil chemistry for agriculture.

ESE/EPS 166 engages the new Harvard Climate Observatory that will fundamentally herald a new era in both climate research and the development of strategic approaches to advancing the climate impact on public policy. The central objective of the New Climate Observatory is to address this problem by introducing, for the first time, the development of a new generation of innovative technology that takes explicit advantage of recent major advances in Harvard-based instruments and optical designs in combination with advanced solar powered stratospheric aeronautical design. The new solar powered stratospheric aircraft that together constitute the Climate Observatory engage multiple recent design innovations in photovoltaics, energy storage, as well as guidance and control. Together these enable a combination of long duration solar powered observing systems, each targeted at the highest priority risk factors that threaten global societal stability. The resulting observations will, for the first time, provide the irrefutable evidence needed for quantitative forecasts of the dominant risk factors stemming from the global use of fossil fuels. 

Important examples include the challenges of rapidly expanding wildfires in the western United States, the increasing rate of global sea level rise, the mechanisms controlling irreversible shifts in the large-scale (Brewer-Dobson) dynamical structure of the atmosphere, shifts in the drought patterns globally that trigger food shortages that in turn trigger refugee dislocation, as well as the mechanisms behind the loss of global fresh water supplies. 

While satellites have for years dominated the federal climate programs, for the purpose of developing tested and trusted quantitative forecasts of risk, satellites engender significant disadvantages. In sharp contrast to satellite systems, the new Harvard Climate Observatory provides, for the first time, orders of magnitude improvement in spatial and temporal resolution observations. ESE/EPS 166 will focus explicitly on this new generation of climate observations, forecasting, and resulting advances in public policy. An important part of the course is the display of Harvard designed and developed flight instruments in the laboratory in the context of multiple strategies for addressing unsolved scientific problems with new instrumentation.

The purpose of this course is to develop understanding and guide student research of human and environmental systems. In class we will explore agriculture, conflict, and human health.  Study of each topic will involve introduction data, mathematical models, and analysis techniques that build toward addressing a major question at each interface: How does climate change influence agricultural systems? Has drought or other environmental factors caused conflict? And how does the environment shape health outcomes?  These topics are diverse, but are addressed using common analytical frameworks. Analytical approaches include simple mathematical models of feedback systems, crop development, and population disease dynamics; frequentist statistical techniques including linear, multiple linear, and panel regression models; and Bayesian methods including empirical, full, and hierarchical approaches. You will be provided with sufficient data, example code, and context to come to your own informed conclusions regarding each of these questions. Furthermore, topics covered in class will provide a template for undertaking independent research projects in small teams. Research will either extend on topics presented in class or address other human-environmental questions. Historically, such student projects have sometimes led to senior theses or publication in professional journals.