climate system modeling, programming, data analysis, high-performance computing
WHAT WE DO
Key Points:
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Delve into the Earth’s changing climate using advanced modeling techniques.
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Analyze interconnected processes influencing climate and weather extremes.
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DCreatively communicate the story of your atmospheric science research orally and in writing.
Detailed Description:
What happens to the global energy balance when we melt polar ice? How does that impact weather and climate in the Arctic and beyond? In Climate Computing, we examine the many ways in which the Arctic’s rapidly changing climate impacts the planet. We use state-of-the-art weather and climate system models on supercomputing clusters to try to answer such questions about how our climate system works and will work as anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change continues to evolve.
Why the Arctic? The Arctic is an oft overlooked yet vital component of the Earth’s climate system. Though many still see the Arctic as an isolated frozen wasteland that has little bearing on daily life in the rest of the world, or as the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” the temperature difference between the frozen north and the tropics drives the weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere.
WHY IT MATTERS
Key Points:
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Climate change affects human health, wealth, and safety.
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We observe the impacts of climate change on society in real time.
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We use creative inquiry and critical thinking to apply key research methods while providing you with valuable transferable experiences and skills, while investigating the climate system.
Detailed Description:
Weather and climate impact nearly every aspect of society, including transportation, food supply, renewable energy, tourism, infrastructure standards, natural resource availability, and national security.
The fields of atmospheric and computer science came into their own around the same time and have remained tightly linked, with advances in one pushing forward advances in the other. The cutting edge of atmospheric computational science utilizes principles of big data analysis and high-performance computing to harness the information contained in the ever-growing collection of model output and observations. Developing experience in these computing and analysis skills will prepare you for careers in the ever-growing field of data science, regardless of the subject matter.
WHAT YOU LEARN
Key Points:
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Fundamentals of understanding weather and climate.
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How atmospheric scientists develop, execute, and describe a weather or climate modeling study.
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Programming and scripting skills that can be applied to a large range of fields, especially computer science.
Detailed Description:
Starting with the basics needed to understand weather and climate, you will work closely with me and your peer research mentors to learn to compose and run your own modeling studies. Leveraging widely used technical tools like Python and bash scripting, you will practice using model output to represent complex datasets.
Through this, you will gain experience using the Linux command line interface on a large high-performance computing cluster. This introduction to supercomputing also includes learning proper computing etiquette and job-scheduling methods on a flagship operational supercomputing system.
