ESSE - GEOS 5510

GEOS 5510 Syllabus

Meeting Times
Lecture: M, W - 1:30 to 2:20 PM
Laboratory: Th- 2:30 to 5:20 PM
The computer laboratory used for this course is also available for continued work from ??? to ??? on ????.

Meeting Rooms
Lecture: M, W - SEC 714 (Conference Room)
Laboratory: Th - SEC N106
The lectures may occasionally meet in the laboratory. Check the detailed Lecture and Laboratory Schedule for each day to verify the room in which the class will meet.

Office Hours
Instructor:
Call my office for an appointment. I will also answer questions by e-mail jsnow@ou.edu

Graduate Teaching Assistant:
Office Hours: To Be Announced Laboratory Help: ???

Lecture and Laboratory Schedule
There is a detailed page for each week in the semester. Go to the appropriate page to find reading assignments and details about that week's lectures and laboratory exercise. When lecture notes are posted, you will be able to click on the lecture number to get the notes. The rightmost column serves to remind you of dates for examinations, term project deadlines, and special events; more details are given on the corresponding weekly page.

Week #	Dates	Special Events
Week 1	Jan 11 - 15	No classes this week. Course Instructor and Graduate Teaching Assistant at AMS Annual Meeting.
Week 2	Jan 18 - 22	Monday, Jan 18 is Martin Luther King day; no class
Week 3	Jan 25 - 29
Week 4	Feb 1 - 5
Week 5	Feb 8 - 12
Week 6	Feb 15 - 19	Monday, Feb 15 - Discuss Term Modeling Project and review possible project topics
Week 7	Feb 22 - 26
Week 8	Mar 1 - 5	Monday, Mar 1 - Last day to post your Proposal for your Term Modeling Project Thursday, Mar 4 - Mid-Term Examination posted
Week 9	Mar 8 - 12	Thursday, Mar 11 - Mid-Term Examination due
Week 10	Mar 15 - 19	Spring Break - No classes
Week 11	Mar 22 - 26	Monday, Mar 22 - Discuss Mid-term Examination
Week 12	Mar 29 - Apr 2	Monday, Mar 29 - Last day to post Interim Progress Report on your Term Modeling Project Thursday, Apr 1 - Interim Progress Review on your Term Modeling Project
Week 13	Apr 5 - 9
Week 14	Apr 12 - 16
Week 15	Apr 19 - 23
Week 16	Apr 26 - 30	Last Week Of Classes Monday, Apr 26 - last day to post Final Project Report on your Term Modeling Project Wednesday, Apr 28 - Oral Presentation of results from your Term Modeling Project Thursday, Apr 29 - Demonstration of Model Operation
Week 17	May 3 - 7	Final Examination Week

Term Modeling Project
You are to prepare and present a term project which uses a numerical model to address an aspect of Earth System Science. This project will result in three items being posted to the course web site: a Proposal, an Interim Progress Report, and Final Project Report. In addition, you are to make a brief Oral Presentation of your work at the end of the semester. The three posted items and the presentation will be graded.

More discussion and instructions for this project are to be found at:
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TERM MODELING PROJECT.

Course Instructor
Dr. John T. Snow (See Biography and Contacts for more information)

As you may know, I am Professor of Meteorology and the Dean of the College of Geosciences. The latter administrative position requires a great deal of my time. While I would like to make every class meeting and every laboratory session, I already know that my responsibilities to the College and the University will result in my missing a number of sessions. "Emergencies" will undoubtedly cause me to miss others. However, I will always have either the Graduate Teaching Assistant or a substitute instructor cover class meetings when I have to be absent. I ask your patience and understanding in this matter.

Because of my position it is also sometimes difficult to get into see me. I have instructed my office staff to give you priority for appointments. Also, I read my e-mail several times per day, seven days a week, even when I am away from campus. Accordingly, I strongly encourage you to use e-mail to ask questions, seek clarifications about administrative arrangements, etc… I will try to get back to you as quickly as possible, certainly within a day. (If you feel comfortable in doing so, please cc: the Graduate Teaching Assistant when you send me e-mail.)

Teaching Assistant
Mr. John Ensworth (See Biography and Contacts for more information)

Course Website
We are striving for a "paperless course" built around the World Wide Web. Our main web tool will be WebCT. Almost all the course materials will be found posted on the course web site. To access the course web site, go to URL: http://www.esse.ou.edu/, choose the course number, and enter your username and password.

Textbooks
No textbook is required for this course.

Reading Assignments
In the Lecture and Laboratory Schedule, specific reading assignments are given for most weeks. You are expected to do the readings before the dates shown the Lecture and Laboratory Schedule.

Where the reading assignments are in original materials developed for this course, those materials will be posted to the course web site. Where the assignments are in copyrighted materials that we are not authorized to post to the web, the materials will be handed out in paper form. You might find it useful to have a three-ring binder in which to organize and retain these materials.

It is a goal of this course to minimize the paper consumed. You are encouraged to read posted materials on-screen, printing them out only when essential.

Attendance Policy
"Attendance will not be taken, but absences will be noted."

To do well in this course, it is necessary (but not sufficient) to attend the lecture and laboratory sessions. Except when you are ill, have an accident, or are away from campus on official university business, you are expected to attend all scheduled lectures and laboratory sessions. I will not take attendance, however, the enrollment in the course is small so your absence will assuredly be noticed.

Lectures and Lecture Notes
The lectures will be more than simply my comments on the course material. On some days, I will review the major points in the assigned readings, emphasizing key items. On other days, we will talk about what you are doing in the laboratory. On yet other days, we may talk about some points that are particularly important for you to come to know and understand.

I strongly encourage you to ask questions and to engage in classroom and laboratory discussion with me and the Graduate Teaching Assistant. Past experience indicates that students who come prepared to class, ask questions, and engage in discussion do the best in the course.

Every effort will be made to have the lecture notes for a week posted to the course web site by the close of business each Friday of that week. These can be used as a study aid and to catch up if you miss a lecture.

It is important that you read all assigned material and attend the lectures. As you will discover, Earth System Science integrates a wide variety of diverse subjects. The lectures and the assigned readings will complement and supplement one another. In a broad sense, the lectures are intended to provide you the knowledge and understanding necessary to carry out the laboratory exercises.

The lectures will not be repeats of the assigned readings. In some cases, we will talk about something quite different than what is assigned for you to read for a given day.

By the end of the course, we think you will agree that through the readings, the lectures, and the laboratory experiences, you will have developed a broad perspective of how the Earth System functions, how humankind is an inextricable element of the System, and how numerical modeling has become a powerful tool for exploring the System.

Laboratories
We can not bring the Earth System into the laboratory to explore. However, we can try to simulate parts of it using numerical models. Accordingly, a central theme of this course is the use of numerical models as exploratory tools and decision aids.

The laboratory sessions provide hands-on experiences with numerical models and opportunities to use these models to explore several real-world scenarios.

The laboratory sessions are two hours in length. You will be able to complete most of the requirements of each laboratory exercise during the scheduled laboratory session. However, many of the exercises will require you to do some work following the scheduled session to complete all the requirements. There is an additional hour for work immediately following the scheduled session. In addition you can make arrangements with the graduate teaching assistant to obtain access to the computing laboratory at other times.

Almost all your work in completing the requirements of the laboratory exercises is to be posted to your web site. Completed laboratory exercises are to be fully posted not later than the start of the following laboratory session, i.e., you have one full week in which to work formulating your responses to a laboratory exercise.

Assumed Background of Students
This is a seminar course for advanced seniors and beginning graduate students in the sciences and engineering. Students will be reading and discussing a broad range of literature dealing with the Earth System, the global pattern of climatic regions, and environmental policy. The occasional lectures will be, by-and-large, qualitative and descriptive, though some numerical facts and concepts are basic. In contrast, the laboratory modeling exercises are highly quantitative. Thus in preparing the lectures and designing the laboratory exercises, we have assumed that you have the following skills/background knowledge:

Ability to access the course web site.
Ability to establish and maintain a personal web site.
Ability to utilize simple mathematics (add, subtract, multiply, and divide; fractions and ratios; scientific notation; carry out metric - English unit conversions; read and interpret simple charts, graphs, and maps).
Ability to utilize calculus and ordinary differential equations.
A working understanding of physics and chemistry.
A working knowledge of world geography.
A knowledge of major environmental treaties (Montreal, Rio, Kyoto) and legislation.
Ability to access the course web site.

Grading
Your grade in this course will be determined on the basis of your performance on two examinations, satisfactory completion of the laboratory exercises, and submission and presentation of a term project. You may also earn "extra credit" by assisting in the development of the course.

EXAMINATIONS (350 points)
Two examinations are scheduled as follows:

Mid-Term Examination: (150 points) Date and time -- to be announced.
This will be a take-home examination. It will consist of three to five essay questions and perhaps a few short answer questions. It will cover lectures and assigned readings from approximately the first half of the course. We will review the mid-term examination at the first class meeting following the examination period. The examination and sample responses will be posted to the course web site following the in-class review.

Final Examination: (200 points) Date, time, and location -- to be announced.
This will be a comprehensive take-home examination intended to evaluate your learning during the whole course. It will consist of two essay questions. The final examination and sample responses will be posted to the course web site.

A make-up examination will be given ONLY where illness, accident, conflict with another examination, or official university business requires missing the scheduled examination time. For absence due to official university business, please notify the Course Instructor or the Graduate Teaching Assistant well in advance so that alternate arrangements can be made. For absence due to illness, an accident, etc... on the day of an exam, call me or leave a message with my secretary or administrative assistant before the examination time. I reserve the right to request a statement from your physician concerning your medical emergency.

SHORT, IN-CLASS QUIZZES (100 points)
There will be short (ten-minute) quizzes given occasionally. These will be unannounced and given toward the end of regular class sessions. All will consist of short answer questions over material from the past two or three lectures. There will be somewhere between five and ten of these. Taken together, they will count as 100 points toward the final course grade.

There will be no make ups of missed short in-class quizzes except upon presentation of documentation from either a physician that you were ill or in accident requiring medical treatment, or from an office in the University that you were away from campus on official business.

LABORATORY EXERCISES

TERM MODELING PROJECT (350 points)
You are to plan and carry out a term modeling project addressing an aspect of Earth System Science, prepare and submit a written report on your work and findings, and make a brief in-class presentation that summarizes your work and findings. Details are discussed in INSTRUCTIONS FOR TERM MODELING PROJECT.

There will be several items -- a proposal (25 points), an interim progress report (50 points), a final report (200 points), and an in-class presentation (75 points) -- to be turned in for grading at various times during the semester. Due dates are indicated on the LECTURE AND LABORATORY SCHEDULE. Total points: 350.

EXTRA CREDIT
As explained elsewhere, this is an "experimental course" that is being developed with support from NASA provided via the University Space Research Association. You may earn up to 150 extra credit points by assisting in the development of the materials posted to the course web site. These extra credit points will be added to your point total before the final grade is assigned.

To earn extra credit points, you can either identify errors in posted materials or provide new materials to post. As you go through the material on the web site, watch for errors of fact, typographical errors, bad URL's, and inconsistencies in format and presentation. As you review materials on the World Wide Web, watch for sites that you think are of a quality sufficient to merit a link to an appropriate point on our course web site. You can also contribute definitions to the glossaries, references to the reference list, or whole fact sheets.

When you find such material, send the Course Instructor an e-mail with your suggestion. He will respond with a decision on your suggestion and indicate how many extra credit points are awarded. Typical awards are as follows:

1 pt: typographical error; bad URL; inconsistency in format
2 pts: bad URL, with replacement URL; good new URL to be added as a link
3 pts: 25 to 30 word definition of a term, to be added to glossary.
5 pts: one-page fact sheet

In the case where you provide written material to be posted to the site, an appropriate credit line will be included (e.g., "contributed by …").

COURSE GRADES
Grades will be assigned as follows:

Grade	% of Total Points	Points
A	90 - 100
B	80 - 89
C	70 - 79
D	60 - 69
F	< 60

Course Themes
Humankind exists within and is an integral part of the Earth System.

Systems concepts and terminology offer precise, concise means for describing the components (sub-systems) comprising the Earth System and their interconnections and interactions, including those due to humankind.

These thoughts lead to the central theme of the course:

For humankind to make wise choices -- policy -- concerning the global environment, an in-depth understanding of the Earth System and the roles played by humanity in it are essential.
Course Goals
You should obtain from this course an enhanced understanding of the makeup and functioning of the Earth System, and humankind's role with it.

The specific goals of this course are for you to develop

An informed view of the past, present, and likely future behavior of the Earth System, one that extends from the crust, mantle, and core (the geosphere), to the environments within which life (i.e., the biota) evolves (the biosphere), to Earth's two fluid envelopes (atmosphere and hydrosphere), to the bounding near-space environment.
An understanding about humankind as a geomorphological force in the Earth System.
An understanding of how humankind interacts with the Earth System by modifying the planetary biogeochemical cycles.

This course will not make you an Earth System scientist or a planetary engineer or even a global environmentalist, but it should help you develop a deeper understanding and an enhanced aesthetic appreciation of Plant Earth and humankind's contributions to the planetary system.

Through this course you should come to appreciate that numerical modeling – the crafting of carefully constructed, but sharply limited simulations of nature in a computer -- has become a major tool for scientists exploring how the environment we now experience came to be, how it is maintained, and how it may change in the future. We will also find them to be extremely useful tools for evaluating the potential consequences of various policy decisions.

The course should give you the essential background needed to understand many of today's global environmental issues, e.g., possible major changes in global climate within the next fifty to one hundred years. It should thus prepare you to make informed choices when you are called upon to respond to environmental and resource issues in the years ahead.

Course Learning Objectives
The learning objectives of the course are for you to come to …

… know key facts about the main components of the Earth System and its bounding space environment.

Recognize that energy continually flows into, through, and out from the Earth System, while matter is continually recycled within the planetary system.
Identify the major sub-systems of the Earth System, and describe their formation and evolution since the formation of the planet.
Identify the energy flows and the key (bio)geochemical cycles that give rise to and interconnect the major planetary sub-systems.
Describe the sequences of physical, chemical, and transfer processes that constitute the key (bio)geochemical cycles.

… understand the meaning of scientific thought in an Earth System context.

Describe how humankind has come to know that which it knows about the Earth System, and discuss the uncertainties in that knowledge.
Describe uncertainties in humankind's knowledge of the Earth System, and give examples of how such lack of knowledge and/or lack appreciation for Earth as a "system" has lead to "unintended consequences".

… be able to use simple numerical models to explore the role of humankind in the Earth System.

Describe (quantitatively) how humankind interacts with other elements in the Earth System through modifications to the planetary energy budget and (bio)geochemical cycles, enhancing some energy flows and material transfer paths while restricting others.
Consider the impacts of humankind's modifications of the global geochemical cycles and predict the likely future evolution of these cycles (and hence of the planetary system) using simple numerical models.