Friday, July 29, 2016

July 29, 2016

Welcome to the last day of class in our exploration of climate change and food security. We will start our class with a special guest who has worked at the Utopia Project campus in Yopal.

1. After our guest speaker we will discuss the observations that you collected yesterday. For this exercise think about the urban environment of Bogota, the neighborhood, and Universidad de La Salle. We discussed the different scales of the atmosphere from the micro-scale (1-100 m) to larger macroscale (>20 km). Think through what causes the differences in temperatures and how it can create microclimates. Below is the weather station measurements
and the second team's infrared temperatures


Where was it the warmest? Coolest? Why?
What materials were the warmest? Coolest? Why?
What are the largest surfaces by area and what were their temperatures?

2. Discuss assignment on your weather event
Have volunteers talk about their experience
Discussion on options for adaptation
Discussion on options for mitigation

3. Reflections on this class
What behavior changes will you make with the information gained from this class?

4. Evaluation of part B of this class
What did you like about this class?
What suggestions do you have for this class?

Thursday, July 28, 2016

July 28, 2016

Today's Topic
Welcome to class number three! We are going to discuss the remaining "suspect" in our climate change mystery. Be sure to come today so you can know what the answer is.

During the second part of our class you will be conducting an experiment to investigate key variables in our later discussion about microscale climate and the phenomena of the urban heat island. Please bring paper and pen so you can take notes during the experiment. I have 2 infrared thermometers and one small weather station. You will break into 3 groups to collect microscale measurements of surface and air temperatures around the La Salle University campus. Take only outdoor measurements. I encourage to you walk around to collect data at various locations such as the courtyard, steps, side walks, futbol field, grass areas, under trees, and flower beds. For those using the IR thermometer note down the surface and temperature. For those collecting data with the weather station, collect air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed. Write all of your data on your paper and we will talk about the measurements during Friday's class.

You should review today's lecture slides for a summary of our discussions.

In our discussion about the Earth's orbital cycles we looked at an interactive website. I encourage you to check this out and I think it will help you appreciate how the three different planetary cycles can affect the Earth's climate.

Keywords for today
  • troposphere
  • stratosphere
  • sulfate aerosols
Bibliography
Gerlach, T. (2011). Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide, EOS, Eos, Vol. 92, No. 24, 14 June 2011

Project reminder
Part 2 is due tomorrow. Please bring in printed copy.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

July 27, 2016 Welcome back to our class. We'll be covering more on climate terminology and start our discussion on climate change. Reminders on your assignments for today include:
1. Part 1 of project due today
2. Part 2 of project due Friday
3. Discuss your most important question for the week with a group
4. Did you set up your Twitter account?

Here are today's powerpoint slides.

Key words mentioned in today's class include
  • albedo
  • light scattering
  • Beer's law
  • microscale
  • anomaly


Speaking of temperature anomaly plots, here is the latest weekly sea surface temperature anomaly map of the Pacific Ocean. Currently there is a large area of below average water in the eastern Pacific that is thought to be trending toward a La Nina event later this year.

Here are some more remarks on your class project.
You may work in groups of no more than four
If you work in a group, your write-up must be original and your “solution” must be different than your team-mates
Start tweeting assignment today and include the hashtag and my Twitter name in the tweet.
#LaSalleClima16
@nmclimate

July 25 and 26, 2016

Hackathon!

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon is traditionally an event bringing together computer programmers, graphic designers, software developers, and other persons with technical skills to collaborate intensively on projects. The events usually last 1 to 2 days and participants usually work in teams and compete to develop the best solutions to pre-set challenges. More recently, international development organizations have been using hackathons as opportunities for intensive brainstorming without necessarily featuring coding or software development.

Our agenda for the hackathon. Please visit the Hack4FarmingBogota website for more information.

The Hack4FarmingBogota was lead by Michael Hennon, Gus Cavanaugh, and Katharine Cavanaugh. NMSU professors Drs. Mick O'Neill and Dave DuBois along with Dr. Jorge Triana Valenzuela from La Salle University Programa de Medicina Veterinaria provided guidance to the students during the hackathon.

Dr. Daniel Jimenez opened up the hackathon with a very informative talk entitled "Trends for tomorrow: Fostering a Revolution in Agriculture." Dr. Jimenez is the Chief Data Scientist at CIAT in Cali, Colombia. His inspiring talk provided our students with many things to ponder about the future in agriculture as we face many challenges such as climate change. He talked about satellite imagery, climate change, drones, big data, data mining, internet of things, information communication technologies, data-driven agronomy, data-driven climate smart agriculture, and site-specific breeding.

The #Hack4FarmingBogota student teams were:

GMO Team
Their team presentation


Heavy Soils
Their team presentation, website


House Farming
Their team presentation, website


Bogota Hills
Their team presentation, website


Environmental Livestock Solutions
Their team presentation


Change Team
Their team presentation, website



To see all the activity during the hackathon, look at Twitter #Hack4FarmingBogota.


Friday, July 22, 2016

July 23, 2016

Welcome students to the second part of your class on World Food Security: Elements of Climate and Climate Change. This two week course is divided into two portions, where I teach one and Dr. Mick O'Neill teaches the other half. You will have four lectures in my classroom and four in Dr. O'Neill's class. During the transition between the two classes, we will hold a two-day hackathon that will give you an opportunity to put into practice what you learned in the lectures. The second part that starts Saturday July 23 will give you a taste of the physical science basis for climate change.

You can download a copy of the lecture slides so you can view them at your leisure,

Keywords mentioned in class include

  • vulnerability
  • resilience
  • climate normal
  • rime
  • severe weather
  • extreme weather


Here is a video of clouds over the La Salle campus today from my time-lapse camera.










July 22, 2016

Welcome to our fourth day of climate change. This is the last day of part A of this course (PDF of slides). On Saturday 8:00 am you will report to room 203P with Dr. Mick O'Neill.

Here is a fun video that I created from a time-lapse camera that I am running from my dorm room.

Here is our agenda for today.

1. Discuss the infrared and air temperature measurements from yesterday
Where was it the warmest? Coolest? Why?
What materials were the warmest? Coolest? Why?
What are the largest surfaces by area and what were their temperatures?
Below is a photo of the courtyard and area that you took measurements.

View of campus from Google Earth
View of Bogota from Google Earth


2. Discuss assignment on your weather event
Have volunteers talk about their experience
Discussion on options for adaptation
Discussion on options for mitigation

3. Reflections on this class
What behavior changes will you make with the information gained from this class?

4. Evaluation of part A of this class
What did you like about this class?
What suggestions do you have for this class?

Thursday, July 21, 2016

July 21, 2016

Welcome to our third day of class! I hope you had a restful Independence Day and ready to continue studying the climate.

Today we discussed the rest of the climate change suspects and you will find out which one is to blame (PDF of slides).

Here are photos of the infrared surface temperature data collected today:
Team 1 data

Team 2 data

Team 3 data

For this exercise think about the urban environment of Bogota, the neighborhood, and Universidad de La Salle. We discussed the different scales of the atmosphere from the micro-scale (1-100 m) to larger macroscale (>20 km).



Tuesday, July 19, 2016

July 19, 2016

Welcome to day number 2 in our class.

Today we continued to study the elements of earth's climate and begin our study of climate change.

Today lecture slides can be downloaded in PDF.

There was some questions about the discussion on positive and negative feedback processes. I will provide a little more information and post on either tomorrow's or Friday's page.

The assignment for Thursday's class is the following:
1. Answer part one of the class project to define your weather event (see handout).
2. Start your tweeting assignment and continue each night.

The assignment for Friday is:
1. complete part two of the class project (see handout)

Monday, July 18, 2016

July 18, 2016

Welcome to World Food Security: Elements of Climate and Climate Change!

This two week course is divided into two portions, where I teach one and Dr. Mick O'Neill teaches the other half. You will have four lectures in my classroom and four in Dr. O'Neill's class. During the transition between the two classes, we will hold a two-day hackathon that will give you an opportunity to put into practice what you learned in the lectures.

We went over a lot of material today but it was a pleasure meeting all of you. In our short time together in this class I hope to get to know you a little better.

Here is the first set of lecture slides from today: PDF of slides

Class project information
You class project is to identify a past weather event that you have experienced and identify vulnerabilities based on your research. Pick a weather event that you can find information on when it occurred, what it affected, and who it affected. This document explains the project in some detail. We can discuss the project more during class. You are welcome to bring questions to class on Tuesday.
Your homework that is due on Thursday is to complete part 1 of the project.

Remember to set up your Twitter account and start tweeting about our class starting Tuesday. The requirements are to include @nmclimate in your post and the hashtag #LaSalleClima16. Use my twitter account to see examples of other people tweeting about the weather and the climate.

Here is a fun video that I took on my way to Bogota from the airplane at more than 36,000 feet.