Extended Abstract (100K)4.11
Air pollution forecasting in an undergraduate advanced synoptic meteorology course
Eric G. Hoffman, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH
The National Weather Service will begin including air quality forecasts into their suite of public forecast products in the very near future. Therefore there will be a need for meteorologists that have some training and education in the area of air quality and air pollution forecasting. In response to this need and as part of Plymouth State College's continuing involvement with the NOAA-AIRMAP air quality research project, we have added air quality education and training into our undergraduate curriculum. We already have an elective course for upper-division students entitled "Air Pollution". However, in that course there is very little pedagogy devoted to the forecasting aspects of poor air quality events. Therefore we have developed curriculum to be taught over a four to five week period in the "Advanced Synoptic Meteorology" course. This curriculum spends a short time going over basic air chemistry and boundary layer processes associated with poor air quality events. After this the students will spend the rest of the time doing either real-time air quality forecasting (weather permitting) or working on forecasting exercises based on past poor air quality cases in the northeastern United States. This curriculum will be taught for the first time during the fall semester 2003 to ten senior undergraduate students. Results of the forecasting exercises and feedback from students about the experience will be given.
Session 4, University Educational Initiatives (Room 615/616)
Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 1:30 PM-5:15 PM, Room 615/616
Previous paper Next paper
Recorded presentation