Welcome!
Quick Facts About METEO 830
METEO 830 is a professional, graduate-level course offered by the Department of Meteorology. Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of patterns by way of statistics, computer programming, and applications that provide decision-making tools. Weather and Climate Analytics (WCA), in particular, uses weather and climate data to provide useful information for improving efficiency, mitigating risks, and optimizing productivity. Why care about WCA? Well, weather and climate affect everyone! Combining weather forecasts and climate predictions with analytics, companies can create better product placements, select efficient transportation routes, provide more lead time on health advisories, and much more.
This course will have students identify and collect sources of global weather and climate data, inspect, clean, transform and analyze said data, and use predictive analytical techniques to create forecasting systems. Students will learn how to communicate results to scientific colleagues, clients, and the general public. Specific emphasis will be placed on the communication of results through scientific reports, analytics dashboards, and blog posts. In addition, students will be guided through the management side of projects. Numerous examples and case studies will augment discussion of project management with the goal being to grow the student's knowledge on weather and climate forecasting, its usage in decision-making, and different communication techniques.
What will you learn in this course?
Meteo 830 seeks to provide guidance on formulating, creating, and communicating user-based forecast systems. After successfully completing this course, you will be able to:
- develop mission objectives based on client consultations;
- propose solutions (in the form of forecast systems) for a user-based question;
- design informative data visualizations that will be used to communicate results through scientific write-ups, blog posts, and dashboards;
- sell forecast systems through well-thought-out presentations.
The lessons that comprise this course are:
Capstone Overview
Lesson 1: Develop Mission Objective
Lesson 2: Forecast System Proposal
Lesson 3: Think Like a Designer - Data Visualization
Lesson 4: Think Like a Designer - Communication
Lesson 5: Sell the Product
How does this course work?
As with most graduate courses, there is a considerably higher onus on you to take responsibility for your own learning. While lessons present guidance on what you need to learn, much of your actual learning will take place as you engage in directed research and experiment with various examples presented in the text. Following through on these examples and exploring various ways to accomplish prescribed, data-procurement tasks are an absolute necessity, not only to be successful on the lesson's assessment activity but to meet your own learning goals as well.