ATS 295 - Observing Climate Field Course (3 credits)

  • Dates: The course will take place in fall term extension (September 13 to 26, 2023). Communications from your instructor(s) and staff will be sent via ONID email starting at the end of Spring term 2023 and continue periodically throughout the summer. Please ensure that you have access to your ONID email this summer and check it periodically! Once you have registered for the class, you will receive announcements via Canvas. Ensure that your Canvas is set to notify you of announcements.
  • The required planning meeting will be scheduled Wednesday September 13 or Thursday, September 14. TBA.
  • Organized van pool to Newport, OR, September 22-26 (4 nights lodging provided).
  • Course prerequisite: ATS 201, Intro to Climate Science – departmental override also required (email ceoas.undergrad@oregonstate.edu to request this when you are ready to register)
  • Fee: $390
  • Contact for questions: simon.deszoeke@oregonstate.edu

Overview

The changing climate is often considered from a global perspective, or in terms of local impacts. Connections between the two scales are not always obvious. Similarly, the basic concepts used to describe climate and climate change can appear somewhat abstract at a global scale, especially when described from only a theoretical classroom perspective.

The purpose of our field course is to provide an experiential and experimental understanding of the interconnected nature of the atmosphere, ocean, biosphere, cryosphere, and human activities that together form the climate system. The course introduces the scope of climate science, underlying conservation laws, and the different types climate information. Students make observations and collect data that allow us to evaluate the energy balance, water and carbon cycles, and atmospheric motions. Students participate in both lectures and field exercises at different sites in Oregon that span the climatic regimes and enable discovery of critical processes that influence regional and global climate.

Class Activities

  • Deploying weather stations to measure energy fluxes and their sensitivity over different types of surfaces and in different conditions
  • Collecting proxy climate records in evaluating past climate variations and exploring methods for obtaining ancient climate information
  • Cruising a coastal estuary to determine estuarine carbon balance
  • Examining the properties of the free atmosphere above the surface
  • Monitoring atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to evaluate the carbon cycle and emission impacts
  • Evaluating different strategies for representing and analyzing different types of data
  • Exploring ethical obligations associated with research and data collection
  • Assessing uncertainty in various scientific measurements
  • Developing effective communication of climate data, analyses and relationship between climate information of societies

Students will utilize a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods for identifying impacts of climate change on the local environment and their experiments provide insight into issues associated with monitoring climate. Students will carry out field exercises both in groups and individually.

Individual reports will be composed of a series of worksheets, graphs and outcomes from each experiment. Group reports will be in the form of a group presentation, and a power point (or similar) document that synthesizes data, findings and results from the class as a whole. Group projects are intended to span the weeks’ worth of data and be inclusive.

Logistics

We will stay at Hatfield Marine Science Center, Newport OR, September 22-26 (4 nights). We will return late in the afternoon on Wednesday September 26. We will plan meals, any special eating requirements, or other possible accommodations via email and in the planning meetings. It is therefore important that you communicate early and consistently—by email through the summer and via the planning meetings—so we have consistent expectations and can all have a successful field course.

Hatfield Marine Science Center

What to pack

  • Clothes
  • Appropriate footwear
  • Sleeping bag (may also be loanable from OSU’s Adventure Leadership Institute)
  • Camping mat (if available and if we are camping in the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest): may also be loanable from CEOAS or OSU’s Adventure Leadership Institute
  • Tent (if available and if we are camping in the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest): may also be loanable from CEOAS or OSU’s Adventure Leadership Institute
  • Towel
  • Toiletries
  • Sunscreen
  • Hat
  • Rain coat

We work outside and inside, and rain can occur in Oregon at any time of the year.