Class meetings:
10-10:50 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 205 Bessey Hall
Instructor:
Raymond Arritt
3009 Agronomy Hall
phone: 294-9870
Office Hours: 3-4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday or by appointment
email: agron406 at gmail.com
Teaching assistant:
Brian Viner
3029 Agronomy Hall
phone: 294-9870
Course Goals
This course develops a basic understanding of how and why climate varies with time and space on the earth, focusing on the implications of climate for human activities. The course also focuses on practicing and refining your most important professional skills: critical reading, analytic thinking, working cooperatively, and oral and written communication.
Overview
Following are some of the major topics of the course:
- Radiation: the driver of climate
- General circulation
- Effects of terrain and oceans on climate
- Climate classifications
- Methods for classifying climates
- Global distribution of climate types
- Natural and human-induced climate variability
- El Nino
- Greenhouse warming
- Long-term climate variations
See the course schedule for a more detailed list of topics.
Prerequisite
AGRON/MTEOR 206
Students who earned a grade lower than B- in AGRON 206 are not encouraged to take AGRON 406.
Course materials
Textbook: Robinson, P.J. and A. Henderson-Sellers: Contemporary Climatology (second edition). Longman Publishing Company, ISBN 0-582-27631-4.
The textbook is available through online vendors and used copies also are widely available. Be sure you get the second edition.
We will work lots of examples. Bring a scientific calculator to class every day.
Academic accommodations
My goal for the class is that every student will do his or her best. If you have a disability and require accommodations, please contact me as soon as possible so we can make sure your needs are met. No accommodations can be made retroactively or less than one week before the assignment for which accommodation is needed. You will need to work with the Disability Resources (DR) office, located on the main floor of the Student Services Building, Room 1076. Their phone number is 515-294-6624, TDD 515-294-6335.
Learning teams
You will do much of your work in the course as part of a learning team. Click here to find the members of each team. The teams have been put together based on major and class level. The intent of the learning team approach is to encourage everyone to learn cooperatively.
Sometimes problems arise within groups. One of the skills you will need in the real world is the ability to resolve problems with your colleagues. If there are problems within the team, first try to work them out with one another before approaching me. When submitting work as a team include a brief explanation of which team member did what part of the work.
Grading
Course grades will be derived from four components: class assignments, a midterm exam, a final exam, and the regional climate report.
- Class assignments: In addition to occasional in-class or homework exercises each team will be responsible for a few brief presentations. One of these will be a presentation on a climate issue currently in the news. If you see an interesting news item that you'd like to cover for your team's presentation, let me know. Otherwise I will assign a topic to each team.
- The midterm exam is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, October 21. This date is likely to change depending on how fast we get through the course material.
- The final exam is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, December 17 from 9:45-11:45 a.m. The final exam will focus mostly (but not exclusively) on material in the second half of the course, including material from the regional climate presentations.
- Final written regional climate reports are due Friday, December 11. Oral presentations will be given during the last two weeks of class.
The weights on each grade component are as follows:
- 15% class assignments and class participation
- 20% midterm exam
- 25% final exam
- 40% regional climate report
Regional climate report
Your capstone achivement for the course is an oral and written report on the climate of a specific region. Each learning team will work together to prepare a report. Your climate region must be selected from a list of climate regions which have been chosen to be fairly coherent while including some interesting variations within each region.
Your team will be responsible for describing the climate of your region and for interpreting the physical causes for the climate, including but not limited to the concepts we have discussed in class. Your oral and written reports will be graded both on presentation and on content.
Carefully review the standards for written project reports and the standards for oral presentations. Your grade will depend on how well you follow these standards.
If you have any questions about the requirements, please ask.
Checkpoints for your report:
- Your team needs to choose a climate region and inform me by email not later than Wednesday, September 2. If your team does not respond by this date I will choose a region for you. If two or more teams choose the same region I will assign the region to one of them (usually the group whose email is dated first) and give the other team(s) a chance to choose a different region. We will confirm the climate region for each team on Friday, September 4.
- The first submission of your report is due at the start of class on Friday, November 6. This is not a progress report or rough draft, but must be a complete report. All written reports must be typed, double spaced and may not exceed 20 pages plus figures. LATE REPORTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
- After your first submission is returned to your group, you will have the opportunity to revise your report. The second submission of your report is due by the start of class on Friday, December 4.
- Oral reports will be given during the last two weeks or so of class, beginning about November 30. Each group will have up to 15 minutes to present their results followed by 5 to 10 minutes for questions. Your presentation will be posted to the web so that other members of the class can use it as a guide when studying for the final exam. This also will be viewable to the web-world at large. You will need to provide a complete version of your report in PDF format (not Powerpoint format) on the day of your presentation.
Grading of your regional climate reports will be weighted as follows:
- 40% First submission
- 40% Second submission
- 20% Oral presentation
Professional ethics
You will be expected to adhere to ISU standards of ethical conduct. For most students this is not a concern. In past semesters the only problem has been cases where students plagiarized their semester project. Since most of you are juniors or seniors you should understand what plagiarism is by now, but if you have any questions please chat with me before turning in your work.
Plagiarism will result in a grade of zero for the entire regional climate report (not just the written part).
ISU regulations require that any academic misconduct will be referred immediately to the Dean of Students.