GEOB 300 Microscale Weather and Climate

Description

‘Microscale Weather and Climate’ introduces you to the nature of the atmosphere and processes close to the Earth's surface on small scales, extending in space from those of a leaf up to that of a large valley. We focus on interactions between the surface, vegetation and atmosphere. We gain an understanding of and describe mass, momentum and energy exchange, turbulence, dispersion and atmospheric circulations in the context of forcing surface processes and global climate. The course introduces basic instrumentation and methods used in today's monitoring and modeling of microscale climate and surface atmosphere exchange.

Learning objectives

At the end of the course you should be able to:

1. Explain how the surface radiation and energy budget affects the surface climate.
2. Describe important surface characteristics that affect surface radiation and energy budget and surface microclimates.
3. Understand the basics of turbulence, dispersion and local wind systems in the atmospheric boundary layer and how they are controlled by surface processes.
4. Know the principles of basic instrumentation, methods and data-analysis (including the use of the R programming language) used for today's monitoring and modelling of weather and climate in the atmospheric boundary layer.
5. Analyze and interpret data from measurement systems that are used to monitor nearsurface climate and surface radiation and energy balances.
6. Explain how the principles of micrometeorology have practical application to society.