Below is an example of a student exercise given to a large lower division class which forces the students to work with data and to process data. We have made some electronic tools available to facilitate organizing and inspecting the data. The students do the work in groups with different members doing different aspects of the problem. Potentially, these exercises are fairly time consuming and students usually complain that this is "too much work" or "why do we have to deal with data, can't you just tell us the answer". Also, most students find that they don't work very well or efficient in groups and complain about "slackers" in the group. Sounds a lot like real life ...

The point of this is to merely provide an example of how data can be used as part of an extensive assignment. The intent here is to not show you how this is done electronically! Traditional methods of achieving the same goal certainly can be done.

An Interactive Exercise in Climate and Climate Models

At the end of the exercise all the data will be pooled and compared.

The legacy of 6 billion people (and counting) on the Earth is likely one of climate change, yet there is very little recognition of this. This is mostly because climate change is a slow and gradual process and any data that can trace it is rather noisy.

In this exercise you will work with local (e.g. Eugene) weather data to see if you can find any evidence locally for "global" warming or climate change. That is, are the summers hotter than they used to be, the winters milder, does it rain more now than it used to?

After completing that you will move on to the global warming simulator.

Local Eugene Climate

Using that applet probe various year data sets to see if you can establish the following from the data. Make sure that you document which data sets you are using that support the following claims.

1. Summers in Eugene are getting hotter than they used to be.
2. Winters in Eugene are getting milder than they used to be.
3. Most of the record high temperatures set during the spring and fall have occurred since 1990
4. It has rained significantly more in the period 1990-1998 than at any other comparable time.
5. The number of days it gets below freezing in the Winter in Eugene is less than it was in the 1950's and 60's.

Global Warming Simulator

In this applet you will be given a climate model. You must keep your particular model fixed while you very the other three parameters. You are to run that simulator and assess the results for your climate model. From this you are to do three things:

1. Write a press release declaring that global warming is either a problem or has been overblown and is not that much of a problem.

2. Determine the carrying capacity of the Earth defined has the number of humans the earth can sustain and still not melt the polar caps.

3. Run a scenario, under your climate model, that won't melt the polar caps until the year 2250.

Since there are 10 groups for this exercise there are 10 specific climate models that you must adopt and fix in the applet. These are the three right most slider bars. When fixed, they should remain unchanged.

Group 1: Lag Time = 100; Temp =1.5; Polar Threshold =2.5
Group 2: Lag Time = 50; Temp =2.5; Polar Threshold =5.0
Group 3: Lag Time = 0; Temp =0.5; Polar Threshold =3.0
Group 4: Lag Time = 100; Temp =3.5; Polar Threshold =2.5
Group 5: Lag Time = 50; Temp =2.0; Polar Threshold =7.5
Group 6: Lag Time = 0; Temp =4.0; Polar Threshold =3.5
Group 7: Lag Time = 100; Temp =1.5; Polar Threshold =6.5
Group 8: Lag Time = 50; Temp =1.0; Polar Threshold =2.5
Group 9: Lag Time = 25; Temp =2.0; Polar Threshold =8.0
Group 10: Lag Time = 25; Temp =3.0; Polar Threshold =4.0

Now, Go to the Global Warming Simulator