Class Project
Expectations and Suggestions
Spring 2003
As stated in the course syllabus a team project is required. The project
will be identified and worked upon by a team of students consisting of
1 to 3 people. You are encouraged to work with students of different backgrounds,
strengths and ability. Feel free to consult with the instructor and other
members of the faculty. Some topics are suggested below, however, any ideas
not listed are encouraged as long as they fall into the broad scope of
climate and Earth system
sciences. If you have
any questions about a project idea feel free to contact me at any time.
Required Elements:
The project will be graded based upon a variety of factors as follows:
I. First, will be
a composite score based upon intermediate submissions. These submissions
will consist of:
A. Preliminary
project description similar in scope and size (about one paragraph)
to an abstract submission for a paper to be considered for a conference.
In addition, the team members will be identified with this submission (points
will be added for team diversity.)
B.
A progress report. This will consist of a 2 to 4 page description
of progress made to date and any obstacles encountered in the pursuit of
the project by the team. In addition, this submission could identify any
needed changes in project purpose or scope identified since submission
A. above. Also it could include summaries of team discussions including
items such as:
iii.Presentation of unsolved questions that might be technically the most difficult parts, and ideas of how these might be solved.
iv.
A work plan and schedule for completion of the project.
II. Second, will
be the project paper. This paper will be the final written
description of the problem investigated, the method of investigation, and
the results of the investigation. Any graphics or slides used for the oral
presentation (item III. below) will also be considered part of the written
submission although they will be handed in later (on the date of presenting.)
III. Finally, additional
scoring will be awarded based upon the oral presentation. This presentation
is expected to last about 15 minutes (with 5 minutes for questions and
comments following.) Points will be awarded based upon effort with considerations
made regarding individual ability, so please, just do your best and do
not worry too much.
SCHEDULE:
The Progress report is
due April 18th.
Presentations will be made
on the following dates May 2nd, 7th, 9th
and 14th. Please sign up for a presentation time slot by April
18th.
March 6, 2002
Following are a number
of project ideas that have been suggested throughout the course of the
lectures. It is not required that the project be chosen from this list.
Any relevant project idea will be considered so feel free to pursue your
individual interests or ideas.
Climate Analysis
Job Description:
GrADS (or other) programming, picture plotting,
results interpreting, ...
1. Using the NCEP/NCAR
re-analysis data look at the climate (using appropriate climatological
variables discussed in class) . What do you observe? How does this compare
to other observations or modeling analyses? Can you suggest mechanisms
that explain the observations you have made based upon theory developed
and presented in class or the open literature? Specific areas you can focus
on:
a. Global water balance e.g.,
diagnose and compare with the numbers in Hartmann table
b. Global energy balance
c. Seasonal cycles of variables of interest, such as the ones showing in
class: P-V-T, Rn-LE-H, ...
d. Climate variability such as ENSO, PDO, drought, flood, monsoons...
2. Take the climatological
data for the severe drought experienced in the Midwestern United States
during the 1930's. This drought led to the abandoning of farming in Oklahoma
and other states, followed by a wave of immigration to California. This
event is often termed the 'dust bowl'. Analyze the CRU data (under
~meto617/datasets/MarkNew0195)
for the continental US to demonstrate the spatial extent of this drought.
What is the spatial pattern? How did this pattern vary over time? How does
it compare to other locations for the same period (for example Maryland,
Europe and China?) How does it compare to similar conditions during other
time periods or geographic locations? Can you hypothesize some mechanisms
or key variables that may allow for forecasting similar events elsewhere
or at other times?
3. Perform a literature search and/or perhaps some modeling (either using an original model or one obtained from another researcher) to investigate an area of the world of interest to you. Make sure to motivate the reason why this region should be of interest. For example: 1. the Sahel region of Africa is interesting because rainfall and vegetation change rapidly over a small geographic region in addition to the hypothesis (with some evidence that supports this) that this region was once the center of an extensive ancient civilization and that the current agriculture in this area supports a large percentage of the African continent's current human population. 2. The Serengeti region of Africa is interesting because the change in the rain band is on the order of the distance for migrations of animals. It is suggested that this region's climate provides a positive feedback to the rapid evolution of animals and humans. In addition it provides a nicely defined region for studying climate land use interactions, especially human land uses.
a. Analyzing climate variability in the 20th century for East Africa, in
particular the Serengeti region.
4. Spatial pattern
and causes of the warm season we have been experiencing.
Literature Search
Job Description:
Paper reading, hard
thinking, back-of-envelope calculation, conversation, ...
1. Perform a literature search focusing on climatological analysis of the Sahel region of Africa. What are the key climatological features of the region? What is currently viewed as the primary causes of climate variability in the region? Can you come up with any suggestions for minimizing the impact of climate variability on the people of the region?
References:
Charney, J. G., 1975:
Dynamics of deserts
and droughts in Sahel.
{\it Quart. J. Roy.
Meteor. Soc.} \vol 101, \pgs 193-202.
Zeng, N., J. D. Neelin,
W. K.-M. Lau, and C. J. Tucker, 1999:
Enhancement of interdecadal
climate variability in the Sahel by vegetation interaction.
{\it Science}, \vol
286, 1537-1540.
2. How did the Sahara desert form? Perform a literature search and/or construct a model or perform modeling to demonstrate formation and change over time. How has the Sahara changed over the last several thousand years? How does this compare to current climatological conditions? Are there variables that could be monitored that may indicate substantial changes as observed over this time scale?
Claussen, M; Kubatzki,
C; Brovkin, V; Ganopolski, A; and others.
Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the mid-Holocene.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 1999 JUL 15, V26 N14:2037-2040.
3. Is there some set
of (climatic, geographic, time) variables that lie along a chaotic attractor?
See papers by Lorenz and others for ideas and discussion. Perform a literature
search. Perform some modeling or analysis using the NCEP/NCAR re-analysis
data. Some references are: Review paper by Ghil etal, 1991 in the journal
Reviews of Geophysics. Another paper: Lorenz (1990)
Tellus, "Can
chaos and intransitivity lead to interannual variability?";
Zeng and Pielke 1995?
4. Perform a literature
search to identify the current available data regarding ice age theory.
What are the relevant data and theory regarding the variation of Earth's
orbital parameters over time? Do these data correlate well with the observational
data indicating timing of ice age occurrences? What are the major difficulties
of the orbital
theory of the ice
ages? What are the alternatives?
Petit, JR; Jouzel,
J; Raynaud, D; Barkov, NI; and others.
Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok
ice core, Antarctica.
NATURE, 1999 JUN 3, V399 N6735:429-436.
Imbrie and Imbrie: Ice ages, solving the mystery (copy available from me)
Mueller and McDonald
(copy available from me)
5. Snowball earth:
fact or fiction?
Perform a literature
search regarding the "snowball Earth." What evidence exists to support
the "snowball Earth" hypothesis? * Some references:
http://www-eps.harvard.edu/people/faculty/hoffmann/snowball_paper.html
http://sis.bris.ac.uk/~cj8639/References/body_references.htm
Hoffmann and Schragg, 2000, Snowball Earth, Scientific American January p51-57.
Baum, SK; Crowley,
TJ.
GCM response to late
precambrian (similar to 590 Ma) ice covered continents.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH
LETTERS, 2001 FEB 15, V28 N4:583-586.
Crowley, TJ; Hyde,
WT; Peltier, WR.
CO2 levels required
for deglaciation of a "Near-Snowball" Earth.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH
LETTERS, 2001 JAN 15, V28 N2:283-286.
Be critical of these
ideas, see for example:
http://irix.bris.ac.uk/~cj8639/Discussion_and_Criticism_s/Problems_with_a_Snowball_Earth/body_problems_with_a_snowball_earth.html
6. Explore an alternative energy source. For example, solar electricity. Discuss some of the pros: renewable, clean, infinite amount. Discuss some of the cons: diffused, expensive, extremely susceptible to weather. Project idea: find out the current efficiency of solar cells, estimate how big of an area a giant solar power plant would cover and how much it might cost in order to produce the current US and/or world consumption of electricity. What effect (if any) might this have on the Earth's energy budget?
A reference you might
want to consider: Scientific American, Web, http://www.campaignexxonmobil.org/news/News.Reuters.100401.shtm
7. Explore the Gaia hypothesis. Some interesting questions to explore involve the evolution of O2 in the atmosphere and the CO2 budget. What about modeling some climate feedback effects? Hypothesize some simple models or use existing models, include some biological effects and integrate the model over sufficiently long time scales. What are some observations you can make about climate variables? How does this compare to existing literature?
7+. Explore The Daisyworld
model in a similar manner as the above project regarding the Gaia hypothesis.
8. Explore the CO2 variability over the last 40+ years. Look at emissions data. Evaluate some observations such as the Mauna Loa observations of atmospheric concentrations. What are the long-term trends, are there seasonal cycles? Is there a long-term trend in the variations observed in the seasonal cycle? What are some possible explanations? Can you find data to extend back in time beyond the direct observations the changes in CO2 concentration (see for example ice core data?) Can you relate these variations to other known features in the Earth's history?
8+. It is suggested
in some literature that the Earth's carbon cycle is not currently in balance.
Can you find some literature on this topic? Some have suggested a "missing
carbon sink" is responsible for balancing the Carbon cycle globally. Can
you find suggestions as to what this missing carbon sink might be? Do you
have any suggestions? Can you produce a simple model or use an existing
model to explore your idea?
9. Explore the relationship of energy usage (such as coal consumption) and the climate system. For example perform a literature search to discover the past, current, and future projections for fossil fuel consumption (such as coal, oil, natural gas, bio-fuels, and/or wood.) How much CO2 is released from each fuel type in each year (ie what is the conversion rate from fuel mass to CO2 mass in the atmosphere?) What are the uncertainties associated with these data? What are the implications for climate variables (such as temperature, mean sea level, etc) across this range of uncertainty? You could use our two layer model (how would you modify it to take into account this gas and its variation?) as a simple example illustrating implications for climate variability or you could obtain more sophisticated models and use them if you like.
Ref: IPCC report
Modeling
Job Description:
Paper reading, 'code cracking', overnight programming, joy of seeing
it working, ...
1. What are the current GCMs being used in the literature? What are the primary feedbacks mechanisms included in the GCMs that affect climatological variables? What are some interesting results reported?
Using models presented and discussed in class, construct a simple climate model to compare climatological variables to observations and other results.
Build a one-dimensional
model of the planet Earth's radiation balance. Introduce or identify a
number of parameters (such as clouds, chemical composition, layer height
etc) and produce results that indicate the sensitivity of the model to
these parameters as well as comparison of results to observations and/or
theory.
2. Use the simple GCM, QTCM, to study the following aspects of climate:
1) What is the atmospheric
circulation like without the hydrological cycle?
2) without Earth's
rotation?
3) without continents
(ocean everywhere or aqua-planet)?
4) terra planet?
5) other possible
experiments you can think of: ref to BAMS article on the NATO course in
Italy
Code/manual of the
model available at:
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~csi/QTCM/
3. Explore the capability
of an existing radiative-convective model.
one possibility is
a 1-d radiative-convective model developed by Kerry Emanuel of MIT with
radiative code from M.D. Chou of NASA/GSFC. Using this model:
Compute GH effect for Mars, Earth, Venus; compare with estimates in class
An obvious way of making Mars habitable is to inject CO2 into its atmosphere (probably by tapping into its own resources: buried carbon in the rock and soil, like in the Schwartzeneger movie 'Total Recall'),
Calculate how much
CO2 (ie. Concentration) is needed to raise Mars' temperature to above the
freezing point of water. How much is this in terms of total carbon mass
(in Gt or 10^15 g?) How does this compare to what's in the Earth's atmosphere?
Is there a source for this CO2 on the surface (or near the surface) of
Mars? If so how could it be released? What are some of the costs for releasing
this CO2 in terms of energy necessary, mass of material needed etc.?
These ideas are just
some suggestions. Remember, feel free to come up with your own ideas.
Originally compiled by B. Bloomer and N. Zeng on March 6, 2002