Spring 2027

Climatic Environments of the Past

Covers climate change from the Quaternary to recent decades, focusing on external forcings, earth-system feedbacks, and human impacts on past climatic environments.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 7

Past student reviews · Shaun Marcott

The class was not too hard for students with prior geoscience or atmospheric science background, and exams were manageable.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Describe the major climatic events and trends during the Quaternary, spanning timescales from the last 50,000,000 years to the last 100 years.

  • Identify the physical processes controlling the behavior of the earth system and its components (atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, biosphere, etc.).

  • Discuss how climatic variability results from a combination of external forcings and internal dynamics within the earth system.

  • Recognize how paleoclimatologists collect, date, and analyze a staggering variety of paleoclimatic records, including ocean and lake sediment cores, ice cores, tree rings, corals, and speleothems.

  • Analyze and critically evaluate climate experiments that are simulated by earth system models.

  • Think and write critically, with particular attention to critically reading the scientific literature and critically employing the climate proxies and models used by paleoclimatologists.

Source: UW Guide 1 UW Guide 2 UW Guide 3 UW Guide 4

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Sophomore standing

  • Sophomore standing
ATMOCN/ENVIRST/GEOG/GEOSCI 335

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Sophomore standing

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

SHAUN MARCOTT is recorded teaching in Fall 2020, Fall 2022, Fall 2024. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

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SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Shaun Marcott

Students described the online course as interesting, with a professor who was funny and engaged the class effectively.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.22 GPA, 46.7% A/AB (n=30 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.46 GPA, 66.7% A/AB (n=36 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.35 GPA, 63.3% A/AB (n=30 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Shaun Marcott

The class was not too hard for students with prior geoscience or atmospheric science background, and exams were manageable.

Past student reviews · Shaun Marcott

Shaun Marcott was caring and kind, making accommodations and respecting students' time while ensuring they learned necessary material.

Topics

  • Major climatic events and trends during the Quaternary
  • External forcings, earth-system feedbacks, and human activity
  • Paleoclimatic records: sediment cores, ice cores, tree rings, corals, speleothems

Skills

  • Identify physical processes controlling earth system behavior
  • Critically evaluate climate experiments from earth system models
  • Interpret paleoclimatic records such as ice cores and sediment cores

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

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Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "95799efde373adce939f30afcdbb058ce4679d882749f9756a80225f08fffadb",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}