Developing Interdisciplinary Curriculum for the Geosciences: “GIS Tutorial for Atmospheric Sciences”

Integrating GIS with the atmospheric sciences has been discussed for over a decade. Using GIS as an analysis tool for atmospheric datasets fosters interdisciplinary research, while GIS tools can make weather and climate data more usable and accessible to non-atmospheric scientists. The major barrier in the past was the lack of interoperability between the atmospheric datasets and the GIS tools. However, over the past several years the capability to read atmospheric data formats into desktop GIS application has become a reality. As well, many weather and climate datasets are now available in GIS-friendly formats.

Fast forward now ten years, and we have new barriers to this integration. The lack of university and college-level curricula that teach integration of these two disciplines still exists. The need for introductory GIS courses for atmospheric science degree-seeking students has become apparent. Curricula on how to bridge GIS and atmospheric sciences is not only needed in higher education, but it is also required by meteorologists, climatologists, and other atmospheric science professionals who are looking for more exposure to GIS training materials. The NCAR GIS Program has collaborated with the University of North Carolina at Asheville's National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) to develop a first of a kind, hands-on GIS lab tutorial titled the “GIS Tutorial for Atmospheric Sciences.” Section 1 of this tutorial has recently been released and made available online at http://gis.ucar.edu/projects/course-introduction-gis. This talk will review the history of integration between these disciplines, discussion of the hands-on tutorial and our future plans for the tutorial.