Welcome to CLES 101 - the new Climate Dynamics course at Mudd!
Syllabus highlights
Prerequisites
This course is to be taken after you have become comfortable with college-level chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science (having programmed in Python). While this might be an introduction to climate science for some of you, it is not intended as an intro-level course, as course content will build on what you have seen in core subject courses.
The atmosphere and oceans are fluids
• Understand the governing equations for fluid motion and their applications to atmospheric and oceanic dynamics.
• Describe the different spatial and temporal scales relevant for geophysical fluid dynamics and their importance in understanding our climate.
• Use knowledge of dynamical balances (geostrophic and ageostrophic) to predict the winds and currents.
• Understand the concept of hydrodynamic instabilities and their significance in atmospheric and oceanic dynamics.
• Apply the principles of fluid motion and thermodynamics to predict the general circulation of the atmosphere.
Course Goals
This course will delve deeply into the physical and chemical processes that govern Earth's climate. You will learn the fundamentals of atmospheric and oceanic dynamics and how they intersect to create our climate system. This will be done through an exploration of both the theory and available observational record. You’ll also read ‘the climate classics’ – influential papers that shaped the field of climate science and you’ll get to recreate their models and analyses with modern tools and datasets in Python. By the end of the course, you will have a thorough understanding of the nonlinearities and complexities in Earth’s climate and be well-equipped with the skills required to create, analyze, and visualize climate models and global observations to understand the past, present, and potential futures of our Earth.
Course Learning Objectives
Learning objectives for this course are split into four themes based on the ideals set forth by the American Meteorological Society for what a complete education in atmospheric science should look like.
The atmosphere and oceans are molecules
• Analyze the vertical structure of the atmosphere and ocean in relation to their thermodynamic properties, including the role of lapse rates and stability.
• Explain the concept of state equations and their use in describing the behaviour of the atmosphere and ocean, including the ideal gas law and the Clausius-Clapeyron relation.
• Describe the role of atmospheric convection in redistributing heat and moisture vertically in the atmosphere and its impact on cloud formation and precipitation patterns.
• Understand the mechanisms by which atmospheric molecules, such as water vapour and greenhouse gases, interact with incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation to influence the Earth's energy balance and climate.
The climate is a coupled Earth–atmosphere–ocean–cryosphere–biosphere system
• Identify the roles of the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere in the global energy balance and use this knowledge to explain past, present, and potential future climate states.
• Analyze the role of the winds and cryosphere in regulating ocean circulation.
• Explain the concept of abyssal or overturning circulation and identify potential tipping points or hysteresis effects that may lead to abrupt and dramatic changes in global climate.
• Describe how phenomena like El Niño–Southern Oscillation arise from this coupled system.
Knowledge of the climate comes from measurements and models
• Articulate the differences between weather and climate models.
• Create high quality visualizations of climate data from models and global observations in Python.
• Identify key climate signatures, like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and its interannual variability, from observations.
• Evaluate paleoclimate records to understand past climates.
Learning Methods
In this course, students will learn through multiple formats, including in-person lectures (some theory focussed and some with code demos), weekly textbook readings (we are using 'Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Dynamics' by John Marshall and R. Alan Plumb, which is available for free online through the library), weekly online quizzes (not timed, infinite attempts - we're calling them the Foundational Quizzes), and more in-depth computational assignments in Python using Jupyter notebooks hosted on Google Colab associated with assigned papers.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that this course takes place on the traditional and unceded territory of the Gabrielino-Tongva and Kizh peoples. We are grateful for the knowledge shared at the latest Southern California Listening Sessions (week 1's assigned reading). While we study the physical science of climate change, we must be cognizant of the real and dangerous impacts of these changes across Southern California. These include the Santa Ynez Chumash's diminishing water sources, lack of a rainy season, increased heatwaves, worsening air quality, and wildfires; the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians' risk of power outages, concern for older members, and decline of abalone; the Coastal Band of Chumash Nation's decline of fish and seagrasses; the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel's depleted aquifers, changing rainfall patterns and plant maturation; the Manzanita Band of Kumeyaay Nation's changing wind patterns and increased dust storms; and the Tejon Indian Tribe's year-round wildfires. We recognize that these are just some of the many ways climate change affects the Indigenous peoples of Southern California, and often disproportionately so. We acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Indigenous people in the fight to stop the climate crisis and will approach this topic and their knowledge with respect.
Sample Assignments
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Chaos and the Lorenz-96 Model
This assignment pairs with reading Ed Lorenz’s “Predictability - a problem partly solved”.
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El Niño-Southern Oscillation
This assignment pairs with reading J. Bjerknes’s 1969 classic, "Atmospheric teleconnections from the equatorial pacific”.
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Ice Cores and Oscillations
This assignment pairs with reading Dansgaard et al.’s 1993 “Evidence for general instability of past climate from a 250-kyr ice-core record”