GEOS 100
Introduction to Weather and Climate
Last Offered Spring 2024
Division III Q Quantitative/Formal Reasoning
Cross-listed CAOS 100
This course is not offered in the current catalog

How is it that we have such a hard time predicting if it’s going to rain next week, but we can be confident in projections of future climate change decades from now? This course will explore how fundamental laws of physics determine why air moves and changes, creating the wind, clouds, precipitation, and extreme events that form our weather. Building off of our understanding of the atmosphere, we’ll look at longer time scales to develop an understanding of earth’s climate system, global heat and moisture transport, climate change, and the ways that humans can change our planet. We will use weather and climate models to learn how scientists and meteorologists predict future conditions. Labs include benchtop experiments, data analysis projects, and self-scheduled meteorological observations. This course is in the Oceans and Climate group for the Geosciences major.