Practical Meteorology and Oceanography

The course provides a practical introduction to measuring physical properties of the atmosphere and ocean, such as winds, currents, temperatures, precipitation, density and salinity. The purpose is to become familiar with the current standard instrumentation, error sources, data handling, quality control, interpretation, and with ongoing developments in observation methods and operational observing systems. The students work in small groups, which focus on a specific set of instrumentation or data. All students focus on data acquisition during a common observation period. Data are obtained from deploying instrumentation in the field, during a cruise, or from existing networks or remote-sensing instrumentation, depending on the interest of the students. In a final meeting the student groups present their work to each other and discuss the interrelation of processes in the ocean-atmosphere system, and place the measurements in context.

On completion of the course the student should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

The student

• 
  knows the measurement principles of standard atmospheric instrumentation for pressure, air temperature, humidity, wind and precipitation
• knows the measurement principles of standard oceanographic instrumentation for temperature, salinity and ocean currents
• knows the relevance of choosing a representative measurement location
• knows the main error sources and typical accuracies of atmospheric and oceanographic instrumentation
• knows the development and limitations of present operational observing systems
  

Skills
The studen

• can evaluate the representativeness of a weather station site for different atmospheric variables
• can work with the acquisition, processing and interpretation of own measurement data
• can display measurement data correctly and informatively for scientific interpretation
• can synthesize data from various sensors and locations
• can document measurement procedures and results in a jointly written report
  
• General competenc

The student

• is able to develop hypotheses and measurement strategies for field work in meteorology and oceanography
• is able to work individually and collaboratively in a group on a self-defined problem
• is able to present and discuss own measurement results in relation to processes in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, both written and orally

Spring, the course will only be taught if enough students enrol.

This course has a limited capacity, enrolment is based on application. For application deadline, please see this page for more information: https://www.uib.no/en/matnat/53431/admission-courses-limited-capacity

The time of the first lecture/orientation meeting can be found in the schedule on the course website or on the Mitt UiB learning platform. It is mandatory to attend the first lecture.

Please notice that it is not possible to follow both courses GEOF232 and GEOF337 in parallel.