Thiscourse will teach the
fundamentals of climate modeling. Students will learn about their
opperation and how to run models and apply them to research problems.
There will be about 5 homework assignments in the first 8
weeks to reinforce quantitative understanding of the lecture and
reading materials. There will be a final
project with a presentation in the last week of class and paper due
early in finals week. Final grades will be comprised of homework (60%)
and a final project (40%).
No text book is required because most required readings will be from
journal articles. The best text books on climate modeling are
Washington and Parkinson (somewhat technical) and McGuffie and
Henderson-Sellers (mostly descriptive). Hartmann's Global
Physical Climatology textbook covers most of the climate science
basics. A longer book list is given on the Wiki web page.
Class meetings will be composed of lectures and discussions. Keep
up with the reading to make the most of lectures. Lecture notes will be
available after class and copies of the figures from the lectures will
be available in class. Occasionally class time will be devoted to
discussion of journal articles. For each articles that will be
discussed, we require that you send in two questions or comments about
the article the to the instructors by 8AM the day of the class
discussion.
Strategies for Success
The background of students is diverse in this class and the subject is
enormous, so the instructors can only provide a survey. Students
need to take the initiative to find help for particular topics
unfamiliar or confusing. Lecture notes will be provided but
students should take additional notes in class. Whenever computers are
involved, things are bound to go wrong. Start your computing
assignments early. Use the wiki to share problems and solutions. If you
can't solve your computing woes within about an hour, ask the
instructors for help (Cecilia especially).