Download Engaging the non-meteorology students

Engaging the
non-meteorology student
Arlene Laing
COMET/MMM
Let’s start with a quiz!
Oh No!
Don’t worry, it’s not graded
What is Weather?
• The condition of the atmosphere at a
particular time and place
"If you don't like the weather, wait a minute.”
Mark Twain
What am I?
“The Cloud”
Percy Shelly
I am the daughter of Earth and Water
And the nursing of the Sky
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenopath,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again
According to children
* Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is
big enough to be called a drop, it does.
Elementary Meteorology Quiz
USED WITH PERMISSION OF DR. ALISTAIR FRASER
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Quizzes/Met1Quiz/Met-quiz.cgi
Water draining from a bathtub or sink rotates
a) clockwise in the northern and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere.
b) counter-clockwise in the northern and
clockwise in the southern hemisphere.
c) cyclonically in both hemispheres.
d) in a direction unrelated to the hemisphere.
Elementary Meteorology Quiz
The air flowing around the low pressure center of
a large storm rotates
a) cyclonically in both hemispheres.
b) anti-cyclonically in both hemispheres.
c) cyclonically in the northern hemispheres and
anti-cyclonically in the southern hemisphere.
d) anti-cyclonically in the northern hemisphere
and cyclonically in the southern hemisphere.
A LOW PRESSURE STORM SYSTEM IS A CYCLONE.
FLOW IN A LOW PRESSURE IS BY DEFINITION CYCLONIC.
What I have used
• Online course material (own site, WebCT, Blackboard)
• Real-time images, animations, graphs
• Conceptual models
– CD-ROMS supplied with text, COMET, UIUC, WISC,
Alistair Fraser, CALMET, Texas A&M, …
• Lab exercises
– custom-made, text supplement, online sources
• Videos
– Discovery, TLC, Weather Channel, National Geographic,
DailyShow, Library collection
• Student web pages
– graduate course)
Where I have used Multimedia
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Small class lecture (< 25 students)
Large class lecture (> 150 students)
Lab exercises (in & outside of class)
Extra credit (students contribute websites)
Connecting from the field
Sample Topics & Tools Used
• Interpreting Satellite Images
• Hurricane tracking & intensity
• Atmospheric Stability & Clouds
• Precipitation Types
• Finding Fronts
• Thunderstorms & Tornadoes
• General Circulation
• Surface fluxes (air–sea temp,
winds
• Forecast contest
UNIDATA TOOLS (McGUI, IDV),
Web Browser, Gnumeric
• Power Point
• Video
• CD-ROMs
• Web Modules
• Diary Webpage
• Video Clips/Photos
What we
had
before
the lab
What we
had
before
the lab
WORK WITH THE STORM YOU HAVE
Review: http://www.comet.ucar.edu/nsflab/web/explore/o1ir.htm
Review: http://www.meted.ucar.edu/hurrican/movncane/
Gabrielle: Rooftop Weather on the Web
Review: http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/hurr/home.rxml
Resources for the
Course
Power point (Outline
before. More slides few days after
class)
Text info & Websites
Module started in
class. Students
encouraged to review
Iowa’s Virtual
Tornado
Big hit with students
& visitors
Make new questions
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For Africa, describe the changes in climate (temperature and precipitation)
north from Cape Town to Cairo.
Compare the climates of Kisagani and Mogadishu
Describe the variation in climates of Timbouctou, Ouogadougou, and Mamou
Using the Unidata IDV
• Unidata IDV used to relate changing pressure and precipitation
over the U.S. Mean sea level pressure and total precipitation
were used. A ten-frame animation showed the Rossby wave
progression and related changes in pressure and precipitation.
• Students then used the data probe to measure mean sea level
pressure and precipitation at a given latitude/longitude. After
collecting these data, students plotted a simple time series
graph of mean sea level pressure, identified the mean sea level
pressure at the time of highest precipitation, and identified the
trends over time of the two data sets.
Graduate seminar course
Presentations, Discussions (In class and Online),
Videos, Student web pages, Final Conference
Style Presentation & Term Paper
Student Webpage
Connecting from the field
• Dropsonde team
on NASA DC-8,
CAMEX-4, 2001
• CAMEX Diary
(images, video
clips, graphs)
• Students - CAMEX
scientists emails
• Writing exercise
during lull in
convection.
Students played
scientists. Used
images from
CAMEX-3 to give
daily scientific
briefing for their
team.
1st eye profile from stratosphere
DC-8
ER-2
Dramatic impact on
hurricane science
Where in the storm did the dropsonde fall?
• the eye
• the eyewall then drifted
into an outer rainband
• the eye then drifted into
the eyewall
• the eyewall only
Other Exercises: In class and lab
• Tracks and Observations
Satellite, surface, and upper air data to track Erin and Gabrielle
• Will there be a Gabrielle?
Examined sea surface temperatures, 850-300mb wind shear, 300mb heights
and wind vectors, and Hurricane Heat Potential derived by NOAA AOML.
• Intensification
Using COMET Remote Sensing laboratory exercise, students learnt to identify
mesoscale convective development, eyewall structure, and relate those
features to tropical cyclone intensification. Used technique to compare
intensity changes in Hurricanes Erin and Felix
More than
Hurricanes
Western
seabreeze
thunderstorm
line advances
eastward
Eastern
sea breeze
(quasistationary)
Western Seabreeze
Eastern Seabreeze
Seabreezes converge
Weak Tornado forms where sea breezes
converge
Wakimoto and Wilson 1989
Some favorite resources
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WW2010, Atmospheric Science, UIUC
WXWISE, SSEC, U of Wisconsin
DLESE
Virtual Tornado - Iowa State (Doug Yarger, Bill Gallus)
Radiation & Adiabatic Simulation – PALS, Doug Yarger
Sea Breeze – John Nielsen Gammon, Texas A&M, COMET
Coriolis, Forces – CD-ROM, Understanding Weather and
Climate by Aguado & Burt, UIUC
• Blue Skies (Perry Samson, Ahrens)
• Remote Sensing – WXWise, COMET
• Data archives – FSU, Weather Unisys, Plymouth State,
Recent past - Texas A&M, RAL/NCAR