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Education -
General
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Written by Mark Chandler and Ana Marti
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Monday, 06 March 2006 |
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Page 1 of 5
Follow this series of web pages to view the text of the guide
or download the pdf document: EdGCM-WorkshopGuide.pdf
OUTLINE
Friday:
- Introductions
- Statement of Expected Outcomes
- State Standards (New York, California and Wisconsin)
- The Scientific Process: A Climate Scientist's Perspective
- Brief Introduction to Computer Climate Models
- Concepts of Modeling (control runs, inputs, output)
- EdGCM Basics: Hands-on Demo
Saturday:
- Summarize EdGCM Basics
- Introduce EdGCM excercise on global warming
- Participants set up, run, analyze and report on basic global warming experiments
- Compare results to 2005 global temperatures and complete report
- Publish reports to the web
- EdGCM Administrative features
- Installation Issues
- Back up of Database
- Simulation Library Administration (Permissions, Import/Export, Cleanup)
- Sharing simulations and eJournals (EdGCM Exchanges)
- Security Issues: User Logins, Password Protection, and Permissions
- Disk Space Usage and Cleanup of Hard Disks
- The EdGCM website: Support and On-line Features
- Feedback Forum
THE EDGCM WORKSHOP GUIDE
1) Introduction
Historically, Global Climate Models (GCMs) required supercomputing facilities and skilled programmers to run, and this remains the case for the most complex, cutting-edge models. For this reason, GCMs in the United States have typically been developed at the National Laboratories run by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where some of the nation’s largest and fastest computing facilities are located. The teams that develop GCMs include scientists from a wide variety of disciplines: atmospheric scientists, physicists, geoscientists, oceanographers, mathematicians, biologists, botanists and, of course, computer scientists. Recently, advances in computing technology have made it possible for some GCMs to run on less expensive workstations and even on desktop PCs, making them available for use in schools and accessible by a broader community of researchers, teachers and students.
This unit will take advantage of this new accessibility to GCMs to learn more about the global warming problem and specifically about the effects of carbon dioxide increase (the major anthropogenic greenhouse gas) on future climate.
In order to reach this goal, we will use the program EdGCM, which is an excellent tool for teaching and learning climate change. The numerical model allows students to construct their knowledge around climate change as they explore on their own how different components of the climate system contribute in determining our climate. The use of EdGCM in the classroom also provides the opportunity to students to understand and use the methods and tools utilized by scientists in their research.
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