Course Description
Principles and applications of state-of-the-art climate models. Lectures, readings, discussion, and hands-on exercises will focus on methods for representing the climate system in computer models, applications of models for understanding/projecting changes to the climate system, and experience running experiments and analyzing model results.
Athena Title
Model Earth's Climate System
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
There are four main learning objectives for this course: (1) understanding the methods used in modern climate models (in- class lectures and student presentation), (2) learning how climate models have been used to advance scientific understanding (e.g., reading and discussing modeling/projection chapters from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report – IPCC AR5), (3) learning to access, work with, and analyze climate model output (e.g., practical sessions working with large gridded datasets such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project–CMIP5 data), (4) gaining experience running a climate model (e.g., practical sessions running a model such as the Community Earth System Model –CESM). Each of these objectives has an assignment associated with it that includes: (1) a short presentation explaining one component/parameterization used in climate models, (2) a short IPCC-style literature review summarizing a climate modeling result from 21st-century projections, (3) a data analysis assignment using CMIP5 or CESM output, and (4) a final project running and analyzing a CESM modeling experiment.
Topical Outline
• Physical climatology and the components of the climate system • Methods used to represent the climate system with varying complexity • Atmosphere modeling methods (dynamics, physics, chemistry) • Coupled Earth system modeling (atmosphere, land, ocean) • Methods for designing a climate modeling experiment • Navigating the scientific computing environment • Compiling a climate model and running an experiment • Modifying initial and boundary conditions, emissions, and output • Working with climate model output (tools for working with NetCDF files) • Evaluation (comparing to observations) and analysis of climate model results