1. EES023 Weather and Climate: Past, Present, and Future
An introduction to the basic principles of meteorology, as they pertain to past, present, and future climates. The course considers the earth’s energy balance, cloud formation and precipitation, winds and atmospheric circulation, regional climatologies, past warm periods and ice ages in earth’s history, and the latest ideas about future climate change and global warming. Students will maintain a weather notebook to enable them to relate theory to observations from real weather data. Three class hours per week. No prerequisites, but course will contain simple mathematical applications and you will learn how to use MS Excel.
2. EES004 Science of Environmental Issues (team-taught course; I teach section on Global Climate Change)
Analysis of current environmental issues from a scientific perspective. The focus on the course will be weekly discussions based on assigned readings. Pre- or co-requisite: 3-credit introductory-level (000-level) course in EES (or the cross-listed EES 105/ASTR 105/PHY 105). Staff. (NS)
3. EES100 Earth System Science
Examination of the Earth as an integrated system. Study of interactions and feedbacks between key components such as the atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere to permit better understanding of the behavior of the system as a whole. Response of the Earth system to human perturbations such as land use and emissions are explored in the context of predictions of future environmental conditions and their projected impacts back on human systems. Lectures, class discussions, and lab. Prerequisites: EES 22.
4. EES395 Intermediate Meteorology
An intermediate course on the basic principles of meteorology. The course considers atmospheric structure and composition, earth’s energy balance and radiation laws, cloud formation and precipitation, atmospheric motion and circulation, including jet streams and planetary waves, atmospheric stability, frontal systems and air masses, regional climatologies, weather and climate modeling, and the latest ideas about future climate change and global warming. Students will keep track of daily atmospheric charts to enable them to relate theory to observations from real weather data.
5. EES403 Earth System Modeling
This course will introduce the concepts behind computer modeling, including stocks and fluxes, finite differencing, initial and boundary conditions, feedbacks, calibration, validation, data visualization, monte carlo, and sensitivity. We will apply these ideas to radiative energy balance, atmosphere and ocean dynamics, hydrological cycling, terrestrial carbon and nitrogen dynamics, and vegetation biogeography. Students will learn both agent-based and systems dynamics modeling using NetLogo and Stella, simple box modeling in Excel, and research-oriented models such as the NCAR Community Climate System Model using C++, Fortran, and IDL. The lectures will relate these modeling exercises to the fundamental science to allow students to interpret how their results relate to larger questions of global climate change and carbon feedbacks.