Instructor Info
Brian Jones
970-980-1378
physicsjones@gmail.com
Time and Place
We have two sections:
- Friday mornings, Sept. 25 to Nov. 6, 9:30 – 11:30 AM, Foxtail 2
- Friday afternoons, Sept. 25 to Nov. 6, 1:30 – 3:30 PM, Foxtail 2
You are officially registered for one section or the other. But if you need to attend a different section one day, that’s fine—no need for advance approval.
Lunch
From 11:30 – 1:30, the room is ours, and folks are welcome to bring lunch and gather with other class members for connection and conversation. Folks in the morning section can stay after, folks in the afternoon section can come early.
Description
You already know how weather works—you know that the temperature falls more on clear nights than on cloudy nights, that the wind tends to pick up as the day warms up, and that we often get a period of warm weather after the first frost.
In this class, we’ll talk about the why of weather, and of climate, the basic physics principles that underlie these observations. We’ll start each class by working in groups to do some hands-on experimentation to illuminate the key physics concepts. Then we’ll explore and discuss how the concepts apply in the workings of the atmosphere. We’ll explore the energy involved when water evaporates or freezes and use this to explain why we get that period of warm weather after the first frost. We’ll do some experiments that illustrate the notion of chaos, and we’ll use this to explain why the weather forecast for the next day is usually pretty reliable, but the forecast for the next week is not—and probably never will be. We’ll discuss the interaction of thermal radiation with matter and use this to explain why burning fossil fuels is changing the climate—and then we’ll discuss what we might do about it.
You don’t need any background in science for this course—we’ll learn what we need to know as we go. You do need a sense of curiosity and a willingness to engage and explore. We won’t have presentations, but there will be abundant opportunities for interaction—we will spend much of our time working and discussing in small groups. Just show up prepared to be active, to be social, and to be amazed!
Sessions
Here’s an outline of the topics we’ll cover in the course. I will provide more description as we go. And I will tweak things a bit if needed depending on the interests of the class.
Each class will start with a question about the weather or climate that we’ll explore—and answer!—in the course of the session.
Week 1: Why Did I Always Ride My Bike Into The Wind?
When I worked at CSU, I rode my bike to work in the morning, and I rode it home in the evening. And, 5 times out of 6, I rode my bike into the wind. This seems counter to chance, but the direction of the wind isn’t determined by chance, it’s determined by physical forces and local topography.
In this session, we’ll explore how energy is transported vertically in the atmosphere and the consequences—including the fact that the wind direction in Fort Collins changes over the course of the day.
Week 2: Why Don’t Clouds Fall From the Sky?
This week, we’ll start talking about the importance of water in the development of weather. Extreme weather—like hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms—generally involves water.
We’ll start by thinking about a gentler weather phenomenon, clouds. As we’ll see at the start of the session, clouds are more dense than clear air. You’ve certainly noticed that fog tends to hug the ground. So why don’t clouds fall from the sky?
To answer this question we’ll think about the upward motion of air that causes clouds to form, and the energy released when they do. We’ll also think about clouds’ role in keeping the earth warm—as you know, it will cool off more on a clear night than a cloudy night.
Week 3: How Does The Earth Keep Warm, And Why Is It Getting Warmer?
You don’t need fancy computer models to predict that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will change the climate—you just need to understand a little bit of physics.
In this class, we’ll see how the physics of electromagnetic waves explains how the earth keeps warm. The key feature of the earth’s atmosphere that keeps it warm is greenhouse gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide that absorb and re-emit thermal radiation.
And if you add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, as we are, it’s pretty straightforward to predict what comes next: The surface of the earth will get warmer. And there will be other changes too, as we’ll discuss.
But we’ll finish with a message of hope. And then—in week 4—we’ll show how this message is grounded in real progress being made and real technologies that could be used today.
Week 4: What Can We Do About Climate Change?
So, climate change is a problem. The big question is this: What can be done?
And the answer is: A lot. We don’t need new technologies, we don’t need to master fusion power. We just have to stop putting so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And there is a lot we can do with current technologies that are well understood.
A few other items from the Week 4 class:
- In class, we did an activity in which we looked at strategies for combatting climate change. The data and details we used were taken from this site: Climate Wedges
- I’ve distilled the information from the website into a series of cards that we worked with in class. You can download the cards here: Climate Wedges Strategies
- I shared a poem I wrote with this class in mind. You can see it here.
Week 5: If You Can’t Predict the Weather How Can You Predict the Climate?
If you look at a 10-day forecast, it only has about a 50% chance of being correct. You can use it as a guideline, but you shouldn’t be surprised if it’s wrong.
The same models that are used to predict the weather are used to predict the climate. So if you can’t predict the weather with any confidence 10 days out, what makes us think that you can predict what will happen to the Earth’s climate 50 years from now?
That’s the subject of this week’s class. It involves learning a bit about chaos, in the physics sense.
In class we will use a simulation that I constructed. You can access it here: