Weather and Climate Spring 2007 Tuesday/Thursday Night Class
From GeoClasses
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Weather and Climate: ESCI 1010
Instructor: Dr. Jen Houghton Meets: Johnson 110, Tuesdays and Thursdays 5:30-7:00PM Office Hours: after class or by appointment jhoughtn@memphis.edu
- Syllabus (pdf file)
"People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. (That is to say, the sort you can use to give something three extra legs and then blow it up.) But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity."
- Terry Pratchett ("Feet of Clay"), 1996
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Schedule for Class
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Overview
- Jan. 16 and 18 - Earth and its weather and climate
- Approved website sources:
- Introduction What is weather vs. climate (very basic)
- Journal entry No. 1 - Due Jan. 19 by midnight.
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Unit 1: Phenomenon in the Sky
- Jan. 23 or 25 - The sun’s energy
- Journal entry No. 2 - Tuesday group: Due Jan. 24 by midnight; Thursday group: Due Jan. 26 by midnight
- Instructions and Questions for experiments in Unit 1: Week 1
- Observations for Unit 1: Week 1
- Concepts to Know from Unit 1: Week 1
- Approved website sources:
- sun and solar energy YPOP tour of the sun – great stuff, easy to go through without getting lost - click on the blue links in the text to get more detailed information
- sunspots and solar cycle very thorough info about sunspots/ solar cycle if you follow all the links through the information
- sunspots and solar energy thorough tutorial about the sun with movie clips (or reading the text) – very dense
- sunspots and solar energy good tutorial about the sun's energy and human impact
- sunspots and solar energy thorough website about the sun - very dense
- the sun basic info
- the sun and its energy (very basic)
- electromagnetic spectrum more in depth info about the sun’s wavelengths and how the sun affects climate
- energy balance (very basic)
- energy transfer what happens to energy once it gets through the atmosphere (very basic)
- reflection info about reflection - click on "read about" near the bottom for more detail
- reflection and scattering click on the different simulations: why do we see colors, why is the sky blue, how winds form around the globe
- refraction info about refraction - click on "reading supplement" near the bottom for more detail
- scattering and refraction basic info about rainbows, scattering, why the sky is blue during the day and colorful at sunrise and sunset
- rainbows everything you wanted to know about rainbows and more (very detailed)
- Jan. 30 or Feb. 1 - The Earth’s greenhouse
- Journal entry No. 3 - Tuesday group: Due Jan. 31 by midnight; Thursday group: Due Feb. 2 by midnight
- Instructions and Questions for experiments in Unit 1: Week 2
- Observations for Unit 1: Week 2
- Concepts to Know from Unit 1: Week 2
- Approved website sources
- auroras very good site to explain auroras
- layers of atmosphere basic info about volume, layers of the atmosphere
- atmospheric composition lots of links with thorough information, including about ozone
- carbon cycle (very basic)
- greenhouse effect basic info about greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, and human impact - follow the links at the bottom (forward and back) for more
- greenhouse effect info about greenhouse effect, follow links at bottom for more in depth info
- greenhouse gases (very basic)
- ozone very thorough information about ozone
- ozone more info about ozone
- air pollution an account of an extreme case of pollution
- PEER REVIEW ASSIGNMENT 1: Available beginning Jan. 23.
- Your essay will be due at midnight on Sun Feb. 4. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
- The reviews must be completed by 5:30PM on Thurs. Feb 8. NO LATE REVIEWS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
- My thoughts on CPR Assignment 1: For those people who completed the entire assignment (including reviews), the class average was 70%. However, there were only enough people completing the review process to allow 2 reviews per essay. This is NOT to your advantage.
If you completed the review process AND if you feel your grade does not reflect the quality of YOUR ANSWER TO THE QUESTIONS, contact me and I can regrade your essay. My grade will be final. I can tell you from those randomly chosen essays I have looked at the reviews for, I will most likely grade more strictly than your peers.
If you did not complete the review process, I will still keep track of the score your text received to be used to help determine your final course grade.
I have reviewed everyone's 1st peer review essay to make sure you received a fair peer review and have changed scores where necessary to adjust for inconsistent reviews (Feb. 17 1:00).
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Unit 2: Earth’s Climate
Note: We'll keep the same group assignments for unit 2.
- Feb. 6 or 8 - Climate zones: global and local
- Journal entry No. 4 - Tuesday group: Due Feb. 7 by midnight; Thursday group: Due Feb. 9 by midnight
- Approved website sources
- climate map printable world climate map
- climate types good overview of biomes and 2 games (links at bottom) that match T/precip graphs to climate type and also plants to biomes
- climate types info about all climate biomes (use buttons at top under Biomes of the World, and click through icons on the left bar)
- Antarctica follow the links for good info about Antarctica
- Arctic map Arctic Circle defined by latitude, click on Arctic Circle for more info
- Arctic map Arctic Circle defined by temperature, click on TEMPERATURE for more info
- Arctic map Arctic Circle defined by treeline, click on TREELINE for more info
- climate, desert specific to the Namib desert, lots of info
- climate, desert general info about desert climates
- microclimates good text info of microclimates – quiz at bottom links to page of all subjects they have info about with quizzes for each one.
- microclimates good tutorial about microclimates, in particular urban climates
- monsoons locally very good short animation on land/sea heating and breezes
- causes of climate very good tutorial to explain causes of climate
- Feb. 13 or 15 - Water cycle and the oceans
- Journal entry No. 5 - Tuesday group: Due Feb. 14 by midnight; Thursday group: Due Feb. 16 by midnight
- Approved website sources
- water cycle basic info about the water cycle (click on different parts of the picture)
- water cycle (very basic)
- ocean circulation (very basic)
- El Nino follow the links in tutorial - basic info with some good animations
- El Nino once you get past the El Nino pudding, the rest is some good basic info, in particular showing the topography of sealevel changing
- El Nino (very basic)
- North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation (very basic)
- vegetation changes due to drought/El Nino
- PEER REVIEW ASSIGNMENT 2 Available Feb. 8
- Plagerism constitutes academic misconduct and WILL NOT be tolerated. You must write your essay in your own words. If you choose to quote material from a book or online source you MUST put those sentences in quotations and cite your source. This is a college level class and such instructions should not be required.
PLEASE NOTE CHANGES IN DUE DATES
- Your essay will be due at midnight on Mon. Feb. 19. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
- The reviews must be completed by 5:30PM on Fri. Feb. 23. NO LATE REVIEWS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
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Unit 3: Clouds and Water Cycle in the Atmosphere
Check your group assignments for Unit 3
- Feb. 20 or 22 - Clouds and precipitation
Instructions and Questions for experiments in Unit 3
- Approved website sources
- clouds basic info about clouds (click on the different types, low, mid, high)
- clouds cool cloud photo puzzles - once you unscramble them correctly it tells you the cloud type
- clouds good photo dictionary of cloud types
- clouds gallery of good (if small) photos of clouds
- clouds great photos of clouds in guessing game - immediate feedback so you can learn the cloud types
- clouds good tutorial about clouds and lifting mechanisms
- humidity and dew point basic info about humidity and dew point
- humidity and dew point short tutorial about instruments to measure humidity and dew point
- precipitation good tutorial about types of precipitation
- fog very good gallery of fog photos - click on them to get more information
- blizzards/snow basic info about snow storms and snow and ice formation (hexagonal)
- blizzards basic info about blizzards
- ice forms more than you ever wanted to know about frost, ice, snow etc.
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Midterm Presentations
- Feb. 27 or Mar. 1 - Review
- Midterm assignment to be submitted as a journal entry:
Due Mar. 1 for Tuesday; Due Mar. 3 for Thursday
Instructions for midterm project
Enter the weather and climate journal
- SPRING BREAK!
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Unit 4: Weather maps
Check your group assignments for Unit 4
Journal entries for Units 4 and 5
Check your grades - Tuesday/Thursday night class Notice: A mistake was detected in the grade calculations. If you are in the Thursday class, your grade is different.
- Mar. 13 or 15 - Weather and winds
- Approved website sources
- pressure, air masses, fronts basic info about air pressure, stable and unstable air masses, fronts
- atmospheric circulation (very basic)
- jetstream and global winds click on "giving rise to the jet stream" for a good tutorial
- orographic wind neat little animation showing orographic air flow
- winds neat animation showing wind in downtown
- Mar. 20 or 22 - Winds and weather fronts
- Approved website sources
- air masses very good tutorial about air masses centered around the UK!
- air masses cool satellite animations about air masses (short)
- air masses and fronts very good tutorial about fronts and air masses
- clouds/fronts good basic tutorial about cloud types associated with different weather patterns
- fronts very thorough tutorial about fronts
- rainshadow basic animation of rainshadow - no text
- PEER REVIEW ASSIGNMENT 3: Available as of 4:30PM on Mar. 17.
NOTE: The instructions inside CPR tell you how to make a line break so your text is easier to read. The characters you need to add to the end of the line to make a break are: Less than sige, letters BR, and the greater than sign. These characters are missing from the instructions.
- Your essay will be due at midnight on Sun. Mar. 25. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
- The reviews must be completed by 5:30PM on Thurs. Mar. 29. NO LATE REVIEWS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
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Unit 5: Violent Weather
Journal entries for Units 4 and 5
NOTICE: This week is the last week for in class work. The remaining 3 weeks will be lectures preparing for the final exam. There will be some review and some new material.
- All previous and remaining powerpoint lectures have been posted (as of Mar 28) - check each week for a file.
- There will also be a review file posted (check under the final exam date) that will have all the possible questions that will be on the final exam for you to study from. The exam will be a subset of those questions.
- Mar. 27 or 29 - Extreme Weather
Lecture Notes on Severe Weather
- Approved website sources
- [www.thirteen.org/savageseas/weather-main.html severe weather] PBS site with lots of good articles on many topics: El Nino, hurricanes, ice, severe weather (click on green sidebars and picture icons)
- thunderstorms basic info about how thunderstorms form (try the quiz)
- thunderstorms and lightning good tutorial about thunderstorms and lightning
- lightning basic info about how lightning forms
- lightning may be of interest to you - how do meteorologists locate lightning flashes?
- tornadoes basic info about tornadoes (try the quiz)
- tornadoes basic info about how tornadoes form
- tornadoes good tutorial about tornadoes
- hurricanes basic info about hurricanes and how they form
- hurricanes BBC - great easy to follow animated tutorial about hurricane formation
- hurricanes National Geographic - great tutorial on hurricane formation (may take a while to load, but worth the wait) - click through the numbered buttons at top 1-7; also click on case studies for more info on damages
- hurricanes good tutorial about hurricanes
- storm surge information about storm surges and their formation
- wind/Beaufort scale animated guide to wind speeds (Beaufort scale)
- wind/Beaufort scale if you're interested: a history of the Beaufort scale
- Apr. 3 or 5 - Studying and forecasting weather
- Approved website sources
- weather instruments looks kiddy but thorough info on instruments that measure weather
- weather instruments good tutorial about instruments used to record weather
- weather satellites good tutorial about weather satellites - how they work and data they collect
- weather maps good basic information about reading weather maps and you get to try it yourself
- weather maps more than you ever wanted to know about reading weather maps
- weather prediction tutorial about how weather predictions are made
- fun experiment Try predicting the weather here:
- Your essay will be due at midnight on Sun. Apr. 8. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
- The reviews must be completed by 5:30PM on Thurs. Apr. 12. NO LATE REVIEWS CAN BE ACCEPTED.
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Unit 6: Past, Present and Future Climate Change
- Apr. 10 or 12 - Global Warming
- Approved website sources
- climate change climate change in the present and future (very basic)
- climate change basic info about past climate change and recent global warming
- climate change nice article and clickable timeline with more details about major climate events in Earth's past
- climate change good overview of climate change
- biodiversity info about biodiversity and its importance
- global warming processes that influence global warming (very basic)
- global warming very large resource of global warming information by Union of Concerned Scientists – needs to be used carefully – watch for opinion/propaganda – some links are interactive, information is good
- global warming BBC site – “changed Earth” has some good before and after pictures – “animated guide” is good too - also need to watch for opinion/propaganda
- global warming BBC pages (large) on global warming – also need to watch for opinion/propaganda – good about reporting the politics but the science is not explained very well – at least have dissenting views in it
- global warming an impartial easy to maneuver site about the IPCC report. Each topic/FAQ has a tab called "details" that goes into more detail
- global warming brief article on global warming and climate change
- Apr. 17 or 19 - Past climate and natural climate change
Review on Atmospheric Phenomenon
- Approved website sources
- Earth's history clickable timline of Earth's history - just click on portions of the bar at the top
- climate proxies brief overview of climate proxy data
- ice cores basic info on using ice cores for paleoclimate studies - click on the next button to go through whole article
- ice cores very good article on using ice cores for paleoclimate studies
- radiometric dating article on dating the age of rocks - click on the slideshow (Marie Curie's picture) for a brief tutorial
- tree rings basic info on how tree rings are used for paleoclimate studies - click through the links at the bottom of each article - at end will be able to interpret your own cross section of a tree trunk
- paleoclimate brief overview of paleoclimate in context of weather and climate
- paleoclimate PBS - very good tutorial about paleoclimate studies
- past climate (very basic) shows the geologic time scale with clickable spots that go into more detail
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April 24: MANDITORY IN CLASS FINAL
Final grades for Tuesday/Thursday
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Class organization:
This class will consist of a series of hands-on exercises to be completed in class each week, rather than lectures in a dark room. These exercises will include both physical experiments to demonstrate scientific processes at work in the atmosphere and also manipulation of datasets you will be collecting from various government agency websites. In order to facilitate this in a class of 150, the class will be broken into 2 sections. On the first day of class, each of you will choose which day (Tuesday or Thursday) you prefer to come in to class – with a max of 75 students on each day. This half-size class will start during the 2nd week of class (see the schedule above). The Tuesday group and Thursday group will be doing exactly the same experiments in exactly the same weeks.
- The in class exercises will be completed in groups of 5 students. These groups will be assigned and will be rearranged with each new unit. You will be responsible for checking the class website to see which group number you belong in for that unit. When you arrive in class on your day of the week you will proceed to the station in the room that matches your group number and those students will be your group for that 2 week unit.
- The midterm presentation will be a movie-making project. You may work singly or in pairs (preferably) on this assignment. The topics will be chosen randomly from a hat. Instructions on how to use the MovieClassroom software will be provided as the date approaches. On the day of midterm presentations, your fellow students will be the audience critiquing your work for its entertainment value and understandability (by this time everyone will have lots of practice on critiquing). I will also be grading these assignments for their scientific content.
- The final exam will be cumulative and mostly multiple choice. Notice that everyone will take the final exam on the same day in class (see schedule).
Because you will be in class only half the time allotted for a 3 credit course, there will be significant outside of class work required:
- The peer review assignments will assess the culmination of your knowledge in each of the units we cover. These assignments will be short essays on given topics that you will enter into a special peer review website created by University of California at L.A. In order to receive a grade for your own essay, you will be required to participate in the peer review process, involving critiquing 3 sample essays (I will provide) of excellent, fair, and poor work, and then 3 anonymous peer essays, and finally completing a self-assessment of your own essay after reading the others. This sounds like a lot of work on paper, but I will make sure the essays are a reasonable length, and keep in mind that each essay will be answering the same question and you will be provided with a rubric for what to look for while grading.
- The final portion of your grade will consist of a set of guided, short journal entries you will enter online at a special website. Each of you will make your own account at the website so that your work is private. I will not be “grading” these entries in the normal sense as there is no right or wrong answer, but only checking to see that you are participating (meaning writing a thoughtful response and not just entering nonsense). This journal will give you a chance to think about how you learn best and potentially help you excel in your chosen career.
I will be available for office hours after class each night and also by appointment, if necessary. Email me at houghtn@memphis.edu to set up appointments.
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Textbook
Understanding Weather and Climate, 4th ed. Aguado and Burt. Prentice Hall. 2007.
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Labs:
The Physical Geography lab is a separate course from this lecture course. Your lab grade will not affect your grade in this course and vice versa.
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Grading
- In class work: 44%
- Peer review assignments: 28%
- Journal entries: 6%
- Midterm Presentation: 10%
- Final Exam: 12%
My goal in teaching this course is not just to teach you what things are, but to teach you why they are and how they get that way, and share with you an environment you may not have been to yet.
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New Images
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Misc
Hurricane tracking chart: image
Lecture_notes
