A Middle-Aged Cat Learns New Tricks: Enlivening Climatology Labs with Python and Jupyter Notebooks

The 200-level Climatology class at Valparaiso University is a required class in the curriculum for meteorology majors, typically completed in the freshman or sophomore year. Previously, lab exercises for the course were hand-completed and focused on review of foundational concepts and explorations of regional climates, large-scale patterns, and climate change. They were also arguably a little, well, dull. Starting in 2017, these exercises were replaced with Python-based labs, operating in Jupyter Notebook. These labs introduce tools ranging from simple anomaly maps to EOF analysis, with a thematic focus on large-scale teleconnection patterns. This presentation will describe the motivation for change, the joys and challenges of teaching within this framework, examples, future plans, and informal assessment of the impact of the change on student learning.