Mathematical and Geospatial Pathways to Climate Change Education

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, climate science poses wide-ranging challenges for science and mathematics students seeking careers in this field. There is a compelling need for universities to provide coherent programs in climate science in order to train future climate scientists. With funding from NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE), California State University, Northridge (CSUN), is creating the CSUN Climate Science Program. An interdisciplinary team of faculty members is working in collaboration with partners at UCLA, Santa Monica College and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. (JPL) to create a new curriculum in climate science. The resulting sequence of climate science courses, or Pathway for studying the Mathematics of Climate Change (PMCC), is integrated into a B.S. degree program in the Applied Mathematical Sciences offered by the Mathematics Department at CSUN. The PMCC consists of courses offered by the departments of Mathematics, Physics, and Geography and is designed to prepare students for Ph.D. programs in technical fields relevant to global climate change and related careers. A website and online community, campus seminar series, and summer internship program with JPL complement the curriculum offerings.

The students who choose to follow this program will be guided to enroll in the sequence of four courses diagrammed below.

Curriculum

Helen Cox, David Klein, Cristina Cadavid, Kimberle Kelly and Brian FoleyCalifornia State University, Northridge

Math 396 CL. An Introduction toClimate Science. This course in ap-plied mathematics introducesstudents to applications of vectorcalculus and differential equationsto the study of global climate. The main topics are: thermodynamics of the atmosphere, radiative trans-fer, dynamics of air motion and wind flows, and elementary mathematical climate models. Offered Fall 2012 (7 enrl.)

Phys 595 CL. Mathematics and Phys-ics of Climate Change. Atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, ra-diation and radiative transfer, green-

Geography courses in Climate Change and Remote Sens-ing are being revised to incorporate NASA satellite data. Tutorials and exercises for undergraduates and graduates from a variety of disciplines use NASA satellite data to monitor atmospheric, oceanic, and land-based change These tutorials are available through our climate science

Remote Sensing

Snow Mapping in the Sierras us-

ing MODIS.

website and through NA-SA’s Tri-Agency Climate Education (TrACE) Catalog of educational products and resources (https://nice.larc.nasa.gov/trace/trace_catalog.php).

GRACE data was used to calcuate the loss in ice sheet mass between 2004 and 2012.

Students used Landsat data to map deforestation in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil between 1990 and 2011, and calculate the resulting carbon emissions.

Sea ice is mapped from passive microwave data from the DMSP F-17 satellite. Polarization and Spectral Gradient Ra-tio are defined from the 19 and 37 GHz bands. These are used to determine first year ice, multi-year ice and total sea ice concentration.

37GHz(v) micro-wave data from

DSSP (left)

Derived sea ice concentration

(right)

NDVI in 1990 NDVI in 2011

Deforestation in Brazil

Web PageThe CSUN Climate Sci-ence web page pro-vides a convenient link to the program and to related sites. Stu-dents can find course descriptions, intern-ship and climate sem-inar information, and links to resources.

www.csun.edu/climate

Climate Seminars

“Climate Effects of Combustion and Dust Aerosols in Snow” by Charlie Ze-nder, University of California, Irvine

Since February 2011 a seminar series has offered fac-ulty and students the opportunity to learn about ongo-ing work in Atmospheric Sciences. To date, 22 seminars have been attended by hundreds of participants.

“Benefits and Challenges of High Spatial Resolution in Climate Models” by James Kinter, Director, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmospheric Studies & Pro-fessor of Climate Dynamics, George Mason University

“The Mathematics of Paleoclimate Reconstruc-tions” by Julien Emile-Geary, Department of Earth Sciences and Applied Mathematical Sci-ences, USC

“The Educational Global Climate Modeling Proj-ect (EdGCM)” by Mark Chandler, Columbia Uni-versity, NASA/GISS

“Merchants of Doubt: how a handful of sci-entists obscured the truth from tobacco to global warming” by Naomi Oreskes, UC San Diego (over 250 in attendance)

“Mid-Century Cli-mate Change in the Los Angeles Region” by Alex Hall, Depart-ment of Atmospheric and Oceanic Scienc-es, UCLA

house effect, mathematics of remote sounding, introduction to atmospheric and climate modeling. Offered Spring 2012 (14 compl.) and Fall 2013.The course was successful in significantly increasing students’ self-rated un-derstanding of thermodynamics and how it may be applied to the atmosphere, atmospheric dynamics, and the interaction of radiation with the atmosphere and the surface of the earth (all paired t-tests were significant at a .05 level). The increase in awareness of NASA’s role in collecting and analyzing climate data through its satellite systems was nearly significant (t (11) = -2.6, p = .054) and this effect was likely influenced by high student attendance at a climate seminar focused on the GRACE satellite mission that occurred close in time to lecture material about how GRACE works.

Math 483. Mathematical Modeling. Topics include fundamentalprinciples of atmospheric radiation and convection, two dimensional models, varying parameters within models, numerical simulation of atmospheric fluid flow from both a theoretical and applied setting. Course will culminate with an intro-duction and application of EdGCM. Offered Spring 2013.

Geog 407/690D. Remote Sensing. Topics include: How the earth and its atmosphere can be viewed from aircraft and satellites using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and used for monitoring local and global environmental change, weather forecasting, storm tracking, seismic analy-sis, geomorphic mapping, land use studies, urban planning, the detection and monitoring of natural hazards, oil and mineral exploration, vegetation studies, crop classification, and oceanography. Students gain hands-on experience in image analysis using ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS software, working directly with NASA satellite data. Offered Spring 2012 (17 compl.), Fall 2012 (22 enrl.).Students indicated significantly increased confidence about engaging in conversations about the science of global climate change (all paired t-tests were significant at a .001 level). Students indicated that the tutorials, in-cluding an individual project utilizing remote sensing data, were by far the most valuable part of the course, successful in preparing students to transfer knowledge to real world situations. They also indicated that tutori-als would benefit from improved accessibility and useability of NASA data sites. These classroom experiences led to significantly increased student self-reported awareness about NASA’s role in collecting and analyzing cli-mate data through its satellite systems (t (15) = -6.31, p < .001).

Geog 416/620F. Climate Change. Topics include: the climate of the Earth and the processes that shape its evolution. Climate science, evidence for warm-ing, projections for the future, current legislation for limiting carbon emis-sions, and how carbon emissions (‘footprints’) are determined. Students will gain hands-on experience working with NASA satellite data to explore how satellite data can be used to examine changes to the global environment. Of-fered Fall 2012 (21 enrl.)

Phys 595CL

Lower Division Core in Mathematics: Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential

Equations, Introductory Physics

Geog 407 or 416

Math 483

Math 396CL

Upper Division Mathematics Courses and Electives in

Physics, Geography,

Engineering

Ph.D. Program in Climate Science or Climate Science Related Career