Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science

Courses

GEOL 1102 - Introduction to Climate Change Laboratory
Credit Hours: 1.0 (Choi, Wang, Zhang)
Study of climate change processes through the collection of meteorological and geochemical data and analysis of climate related datasets.

GEOL 1147 - Introductory Meteorology Laboratory
Credit Hours: 1.0 (Rappenglueck, Jiang)
Study of weather elements and analysis of weather phenomena using meteorological instrumentation.

GEOL 1302 - Introduction to Global Climate Change
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Choi, Wang, Zhang)
Examines how past climate records and models provide a better understanding of possible future climate changes. Greenhouse gases, solar output, Earth’s orbit, and anthropogenic effects.

GEOL 1347 - Introduction to Meteorology
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck, Jiang)
Basic concepts and principles of meteorological processes including clouds and precipitation, local and global circulation, air masses and fronts, and severe weather systems.

GEOL 3342 - Principles of Air Pollution
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck, Wang)
Structure of the atmosphere, anthropogenic and natural emissions of pollutant precursors, meteorological influences on pollutant transport and diffusion, chemical transformations, and health effects of pollution.

GEOL 3378 - Principles of Atmospheric Science
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Jiang, Choi)
Principles of physics and dynamics of atmosphere: Local, meso, and synoptic scale weather and global general circulation.

GEOL 3380 - Physical Meteorology
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Jiang)
Fundamental physical processes in the atmospheric sciences: thermodynamics, radiative transfer, and cloud microphysics.

GEOL 3381 - Micrometeorology
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck)
Behavior of the atmosphere, radiation, and energy balance near the earth’s surface; transfer of heat, mass and momentum; effects on pollutants, microclimate, and land surface on the atmospheric boundary layer.

GEOL 3382 - Atmospheric Chemistry w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck)
Introduction to the principles of atmospheric chemistry and their relationship to global change.

GEOL 4333 - Mesoscale Meteorology
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Choi)
Physical nature and practical consequences of mesoscale atmospheric phenomena. Mesoscale convective systems, fronts, terrain-forced circulations, observations, analysis, and prediction of mesoscale phenomena.

GEOL 4334 - Environmental Data Analysis w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Wang)
Physical and mathematical basis of environmental data analysis. Topics include basic concepts of statistics, regression, filtering, and principal component analysis, etc

GEOL 4335 - Numerical Modeling in Atmospheric Science
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Choi)
Concepts of numerical models in atmospheric science, meteorological models, urban and regional air quality models, and mobile emissions models.

GEOL 4336 - Atmospheric Radiation
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Jiang)
Principles of radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Remote sensing of clouds, aerosols, and trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere.

GEOL 4341 - Dynamic Meteorology w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Choi)
Principles of atmospheric motions, continuity and momentum equations, atmospheric thermodynamics, planetary boundary layer and free tropospheric motions, mesoscale and synoptic systems, general circulation.

GEOL 4346 - Air Pollution Meteorology w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3 (Rappenglueck)
Meteorological factors influencing air quality. Atmospheric dispersion and characteristics, land use and topographic effects, local circulations, effects of cloud and precipitation, long range transport.

GEOL 4347 - Atmospheric Biogeochemistry w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Wang)
Global biogeochemical cycles of relevant atmospheric species; impact of human perturbations of biogeochemical cycles on atmospheric composition and human health.

GEOL 4397 - Remote Sensing for Atmospheric Science w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck)
Remote Sensing (RS) techniques, their physical principals and applications in atmospheric science. Analysis of meteorological variables, atmospheric trace gases, and surface properties.

GEOL 6319 - Atmosphere and Ocean Dynamics
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Zhang)
Dynamics of large-scale motions in the atmosphere and ocean.

GEOL 6326 - Remote Sensing for Atmospheric Science w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck)
Remote Sensing (RS) techniques, their physical principals and applications in atmospheric science. Analysis of meteorological variables, atmospheric trace gases, and surface properties.

GEOL 6327 - Atmospheric Radiation
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Jiang)
The basic physics of absorption and scattering by molecules, aerosols, and clouds, theory of radiative transfer, solar insolation, thermal emission, heating rates, and applications to climate and remote sensing.

GEOL 6328 - Atmospheric Data Analysis and Statistics w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Wang)
Physical and mathematical basis of atmospheric data analysis. Topics include basic concepts of statistics, regression, filtering, and principal component analysis, etc.

GEOL 6330 - Dynamic Meteorology w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Choi)
Study of atmospheric motions and thermodynamics as solutions of the fundamental equations appropriate to mesoscale and synoptic weather phenomena.

GEOL 6332 - Air Pollution Meteorology w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3 (Rappenglueck)
Meteorological factors influencing air quality. Atmospheric dispersion and characteristics, land use and topographic effect, local circulations, effects of cloud and precipitation, long range transport, exchange between troposphere and stratosphere.

GEOL 6334 - Atmospheric Chemistry w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck)
Emission sources and chemical transformations of urban, regional, and global scale air pollution including ozone, particulates, and acids deposition.

GEOL 6335 - Atmospheric Numerical Modeling
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Choi)
Numeric modeling techniques used in atmospheric sciences including synoptic and mesoscale numerical weather forecasting, global climate modeling, and air pollution modeling.

GEOL 6336 - Boundary Layers and Turbulence
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Rappenglueck)
Boundary layer mean and turbulent motions, convective and stable boundary layers, boundary layer scaling and similarity theory, turbulence closures, and boundary layer modeling.

GEOL 6337 - Atmospheric Physics
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Jiang)
Physical principles in atmospheric sciences, including thermodynamics, radiative transfer, cloud physics and wave dynamics.

GEOL 6370 - Atmospheric Biogeochemistry w/Lab
Credit Hours: 3.0 (Wang)
Integrated perspective on global biogeochemical cycles of relevant atmospheric species; factors that regulate cycles; impact of human perturbations of biogeochemical cycles on atmospheric composition, climate, and human health.