Announcements:

Monday, December 9:

Course grades including the final exam are posted. Please let me know ASAP if there are any errors. I will submit the official grades Monday morning. I wish you all a nice winter break.

Monday, December 9:

Grades not including the final exam are posted. Explanation for the columns on the gradesheet: "HWave" is your homework average. It is determined by summing HW1 - HW5 and dividing by 4. This makes up 20% of your grade. "Paper Topic" was the term paper extra credit assignment. "Term paper" is your term paper grade. "Paper Topic" plus "Term Paper" makes up another 20% of your grade. Finally, each of "Exam1", "Exam2", and "Exam3" count as 20% of your grade. "Class Average" is your class average based on the weighting just described. The Letter grade scale for the class is A (89%), B (76%), C (60%), D (45%) and E (<45%). The column "To Raise Grade" tells you what you need to score on the final exam to raise your letter grade one letter higher. The final exam is completely optional. If you do not take the final exam, you will get the letter grade shown. The letter grade scale is set and does not change for students who take the final exam. Tomorrow in class, I will briefly answer any questions about the grading, and then I will talk about the final exam. If you are considering taking the final exam, then I suggest that you come to class tomorrow and bring your previous exams, exam 1 and exam 2. If you do not plan to take the final exam, then you do not need to come to class tomorrow, unless you wish to pick up your graded exam 3 and global warming essay. For those not taking the final exam, good luck on your other finals and have a nice winter break.

Thursday, November 21:

Homework 4 has been graded. Grades are posted for all the papers I received, except for one that did not have a name on it. Also, as requested by several students, I placed a topic outline for exam 3 under the Old Exams link. I will update the outline to include the number of exam questions under each topic after I have written your exam 3.

Monday, November 18:

Homework #5 is now posted. I will briefly discuss the homework in class on Thursday. Please read it over before then. The assignment is due on Tuesday, December 3, which is the first class after Thanksgiving break.

Thursday, November 14:

All of the 500 mb maps necessary to complete Homework #4 are now available. The homework is due in class on Tuesday, November 19.

Tuesday, November 5:

Homework #4 is posted under the Homework Link. Please read over the assignment sometime before class on Thursday.

Friday, October 25:

Term paper grades are posted under the grades link. A grade of 0 (zero) means that either I do not have a term paper for you or you turned in a paper that was plagiarized. A grade of X means that you have not submitted your paper to turnitin.com. I have opened the deadline at turnitin to the end of next week, November 1. You will not get a grade for your paper until this is done. Your submission will be considered late. A grade of Y means that you submitted a paper via turnitin.com, but did not turn in a printed copy in class. You must submit a printed copy to receive a grade.

Thursday, October 24:

Homework #3 is now due on Thursday, October 31, which is the same day as the exam.

Thursday, October 10:

Homework #3 is posted under the Homework Link. We have already covered the material necessary to answer the first 9 of 10 questions. As with the previous homework, I will take questions about the homework at the beginning of each class (before lecture).

Tuesday, October 8:

Grades for homework #2 are posted under the Grades Link. The papers will be returned in class on Thursday.

Wednesday, October 2:

Remember that the term paper is due in class in two weeks on Thursday, October 17. You are expected to turn in a printed copy in class. You are also required to upload a copy of the same paper to turnitin.com. The instructions for how to submit your paper to turnitin.com have been posted under the Homework Link.

Monday, September 30:

Grades for exam 1 are posted under the Grades Link. The average was 65%. The exams will be returned in class tomorrow. If you did poorly on this exam, keep in mind that you can replace your lowest exam score by taking the final exam, so there is no need to panic at this point.

Monday, September 23:

On Friday, I posted the incorrect answers to the Fall 2012, exam 1. There were several versions of the exam and I posted answers for a different version than I gave you. The corrected document is available under the Old Exams Link Sorry about the mistake.

Friday, September 20:

I placed answers to exam 1, Fall 2012 as well as a topic outline for this year's exam under the Old Exams Link.

Wednesday, September 18:

At least one student was having trouble viewing the images in the WORD document for homework #2. I placed the originals of all images as links below the homework instructions on the Homework Link.

Monday, September 16:

The second homework is now complete and is available under the Homework Link.

Wednesday, September 11:

I posted the second homework under the Homework Link. We have already covered the material necessary to answer questions 1-4. We will soon cover the material for questions 5-7. There will be an additional question or two added to the document, so you will need to check back for updates to the homework document.

Wednesday, September 4:

I posted a grades sheet under the Grades Link. Please make sure you can find your selected class ID. If you forgot your ID or would like to change your ID, please let me know. As of this morning, there are 16 students registered for the class who have not turned in homework #1. Do not be confused by the relative size of the numbers in the table. Homework 1 counts as 10 points toward your overall homework grade, which will probably be out of 400 points. The term paper topic will count as 5% extra credit on your term paper grade.

Tuesday, August 27:

Welcome to Atmospheric Sciences 336. Please periodically check this area for class announcements.

Course Objectives:

This course examines basic weather phenomena, climate variability and climate change, and their associated effects on people. The possibility and implications of human-caused changes in the climate system are also discussed.

Web page:

http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/courses/fall13/atmo336/home.html

Course Hours/Location:

Tuesday, Thursday   9:30 - 10:45  
Education Building (EDUC), Room 353.

Instructor:

Dr. Dale Ward, Lecturer / Research Scientist
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Email: ward@atmo.arizona.edu (Best way to contact me)
Office: Physics and Atmospheric Sciences (PAS) Building, Room 566D.
Office Hours: Thursdays 1 - 2, or by appointment.

Teaching Assistants:

Denise Balukas
Email: dbalukas@email.arizona.edu
Office: Physics and Atmospheric Sciences (PAS) Building, Room 526
Office Hours: Tuesdays 1-2, Wednesdays 2-3, or by appointment.

Will Lytle
Email: welytle@email.arizona.edu
Office: Physics and Atmospheric Sciences (PAS) Building, Room 526
Office Hours: Mondays 12:30 - 1:30 or by appointment.

Class Notes / Important Dates:

There is no textbook for this course. Lectures will be based on the reading material posted under the Lectures Link and additional material that will be distributed during lectrues throughout the semester. I expect that each student read over the relevant reading material before the lecture is presented in class. This is important because the you will be famaliar with what I discuss in lecture and better able to understand it.

Important dates, such as homework deadlines, exam dates, etc., will be posted in the class calendar.

Grading:

Homework:

Homework assignments will be given periodically during the semester. These will consist of short written papers and brief problem sets. The sum total of all homework accounts for 20% of your final grade. Individual homework assignments may not be weighted equally in determining your overall class homework grade. Expect about four homeworks to be assigned during the semester (not including the simple homework #1, which is due during the second week of class).

Your homework assignments will be graded on the quality and clarity of your English as well as their content. No cheating, fabrication, facilitating academic dishonesty, or plagiarism will be tolerated (see University of Arizona Code of Academic Integrity). The term paper and perhaps some of the homework assignments will be filtered through Turnitin.

All homework assignments will be available on the class web page. Homework assignments turned in late will incur a grade reduction of 10% per day.

Term Paper:

A term paper on the general subject of the United States adopting a carbon emission reduction policy will be required for each student. Information about the paper is available under the homework link . I will discuss the term paper in class on Tuesday, September 3. Please read over the assignment sometime before coming to class on September 3.

The term paper will account for 20% of your final class grade. It is due on October 17, which is just before spring break and approximately the midway point in the semester. I strongly suggest that you begin to work on your paper long before the due date. The paper accounts for a significant portion of your final grade. As an incentive to begin early, there is an optional assignment, which is due on September 11, in which I ask you to specify your topic and perhaps provide a preliminary list of references. You can earn up to 5% extra credit on your term paper for this assignment. Information is available under the homework link .

Exams:

There will be 3 in-class exams and a final exam. Exam grades account for 60% of your final grade. Each in-class exam will account for 20% of your final grade. The exams will consist of a mixture of multiple choice and short answer questions. The in-class exams are not comprehensive in that the questions concentrate on material covered since the last exam. However, it is expected that you are familiar with some of the basic concepts covered early in the semester.

Questions from previous exams will be made available on the class web pages.

Final exam is Thursday, December 19 from 10:30 - 12:30 in the regular classroom, Education Building, room 353.

Exam Policy:

You are expected to study and understand material covered in class during lecture as well as to read the relevant material from the class notes. Exam questions will be taken from both the in-class lectures and the reading material included in the class web pages.

Please contact the instructor (preferrably via e-mail) as soon as possible if for an unexpected reason you are unable to be in class for an exam. A make-up exam will be arranged with sufficient proof. No make-up exam will be given unless you notify the instructor BEFORE missing the exam in class. In general, I would prefer make-up exams to be taken before the exam is given in class.

Grade Scale:

Your final grade will be curved and therefore depends on everybody else's grades. However, the grade scale will not be any more difficult than A(90%); B(80%); C(70%); D(60%).