First Steps in Biosphere-Atmosphere Modelling
Grundläggande Biosfärs-Atmosfärsmodellering

FKF030F, 5 credits

Valid from: Spring 2019
Decided by: Anders Gustafsson FTF-AGU
Date of establishment: 2019-05-26

General Information

Division: Nuclear Physics
Course type: Third-cycle course
Teaching language: English

Aim

The course aim to provide basic education on: (1) the most important biological, chemical and physical processes that govern the concentrations of gases and aerosol particles in the atmosphere, (2) how the biosphere interact with the atmosphere, and (3) how to implement these processes numerically in atmospheric models.

Goals

Knowledge and Understanding

For a passing grade the doctoral student must

• Understand the most important biological, chemical and physical processes that govern the concentrations of gases and aerosol particles in the atmosphere.
• Be able to give examples of how the biosphere interacts with the atmosphere.

Competences and Skills

For a passing grade the doctoral student must

• Be able to develop atmospheric models which describes how the atmosphere interacts with the biosphere and how emissions of gases from the biosphere influences the formation of new aerosol particles.
• Show basic knowledge about how to program in Fortran and how to visualize the results e.g. in Matlab.

Course Contents

On the course, everyone will program their own atmospheric boundary layer model with gas-phase chemistry and aerosol dynamics, including: equations of flow for the atmospheric boundary layer with the first order turbulence closure, 1-dimensional column model + numerical solution, emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) from vegetation, modelling of chemical kinetics by systems of differential equations, dry deposition of gases and aerosol particles and numerical solutions for aerosol formation and growth. The model will be coded in Fortran 95.

Course Literature

The course literature will mainly consist of lecture slides that will be provided during the course.

Instruction Details

Types of instruction: Lectures, exercises. The course is provided as an intensive 2-week course + pre-course preparations + writing of a scientific report. Lectures will be mixed with coding sessions supervised by experienced atmosphere-biosphere modelers. The students solve pre-course Fortran exercises before the 2-week intensive course start. In the end of the course all students write a scientific report about the model development and results from the model.

Examination Details

Examination format: Written report. Each student write a short scientific report based on the results of their model simulations and send the report and their developed numerical code to the responsible teacher (Pontus Roldin).
Grading scale: Failed, pass
Examiner:

Admission Details

Assumed prior knowledge: A basic knowledge of programming in some computer language (e.g. Fortran, C++, Python, Matlab) is required. In the course, we will only provide a small amount of Fortran-lectures to teach the basics of Fortran and programming.

Further Information

You will need to bring your own laptop to the course. Make sure that you have installed a text-editor, Fortran compiler and software to visualization of the model results (e.g. Matlab) on your laptop. We will provide Fortran online-teaching material available and pre-exercises to be solved before the course. The lectures and tasks will be sent per email to the participants. The solution of one selected exercise has to be sent back to the course responsible teacher (Pontus Roldin) before the start of the course as a requirement to ensure that a basic Fortran knowledge is assured and that the compiler and the used plotting programs are sufficient.

Course Occasion Information

Contact and Other Information

Course coordinators: