Title: Climate Change and the Accuracy of Climate Data

Detecting and predicting climate change involves running numerical models that take account of human activities. The results are then compared with past climate data. What makes this task so difficult (and fascinating) is that unlike most other fields of science, climate data are not direct observations but are also the product of related numerical models. Before we can study climate change, we must check how well the climate "data" matches the actual atmosphere.

Our NASA research over the past decade has tried to help with this check by capturing wind and temperature measurements from flight data recorders that are not available in real time, comparing them with model results, and trying to determine if the climate data are actually valid. The heart of our results is that in certain key ways, they're not.

Our study during this institute will let the participants pursue this question using actual aircraft observations and current climate models. Because both sources are located on private but accessible portions of the World Wide Web, these experiments can be done by the teachers both during the institute and with their students during the school year.

Along the way, we will examine several key ideas which are useful in teaching environmental sciences, geography, and history classes.

1. The analogy between summer sea breezes at the beach and the fundamental global Hadley circulation (warm air rises at the equator and descends at 30EN and 30ES).
2. The relation between jet streams and a figure skater pulling in her arms and the role of jet streams in climate.
3. The nature of the global water cycle and how it is depicted in models. This area is of special interest to students because of its relation to geography and settlement patterns (why are the world's major deserts at 30EN and 30ES?).

These questions bring us back to one of the themes of the institute: climate and environmental change. Unless we can have confidence in our knowledge of the Hadley circulation, moisture cycles, and the associated jet streams, it will be difficult to say anything about how humans may be modifying them.

Finally, this field is characterized by very large data sets: multiple Gigabytes per day. During the institute we will master the computer techniques that allow us to make numerical comparisons without trying to transfer that much data across the Internet: quantitative interpolation from graphical output. Multiple copies of the software needed (Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop; any spreadsheet) should be within the budgets of individual school systems. Schedule:
    Day 1:

• discussion of climate "data," jet streams, moisture cycle
• introduction to climate data and aircraft data on the Web
• use of standard graphics and spreadsheet software to compare
• climate and aircraft data
• hands-on lab: individual cases

    Day 2:

• role of Terra and Aqua satellite
• discussion of day 1 case results
• hands-on lab: ensembles
• plans for individual and group projects

    Day 3:

• discussion of the Christmas 1999 storms and some recent Canadian jets
• PROJECT

    Readings:

• discussions of Hadley circulation in McGraw-Hill and Britannica encyclopedias-further readings will be supplied matched to the background of the participants

Web References:

Global Aircraft Data Experiment (GADS):
http://jet.purchase.edu/cmm
Sensitivity of Pollutant Back Trajectories:
Trajectories: http://telsci.arc.nasa.gov/~sonex/model_gifs/BT971015.gif
Terra:http://terra.nasa.gov
Aqua: http://eos-pm.gsfc.nasa.gov

Last year's web page and cases:
http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/help/temp_presentations/tenenbaum_new