This course will examine Earth’s climate dynamics from the perspective of recent research that has focused on the energy budget. Topics will include: the processes that control Earth’s climatology; radiative feedbacks and climate sensitivity; timescales of climate response to forcing; mechanisms of climate variability; oceanic and atmospheric heat transport from an energy budget perspective; the role of ocean circulation in climate change; the surface energy budget and hydrologic cycle changes with global warming; and sources of uncertainty in climate prediction. The course will explore these topics through a hierarchy of idealized physical models, as well as their application towards understanding the complex system dynamics seen in both nature and global climate models.