Unidata

It's been nearly 1-1/2 years since the workshop. What impact has the workshop had on you? If you have tried to implement ideas from the workshop, please share your success/failure stories!

Although I haven't taught since the workshop, I did find Mike Baldwin and Jack Kain's 'modules' covering the BMJ and KF convective schemes useful in my graduate level parameterization scheme course. I've also heard some faculty members toss around the idea of using EdGCM in their classes, which it looks like it will be used in some courses in the spring.

Perhaps most importantly, I've heard many discussions/debates (as a direct result of the BAMS article) on the 'proper' use of models as educational tools. Talk may be cheap, but without an ongoing dialog, we are stagnant.

In teaching our department's Introductory Meteorology course last fall (2006), I used some of the Java Applets presented by Tom Whittaker and Steve Ackerman. I made a homework assignment out of the Hurricane Applet, actually, and I think the students found it interesting and informative. I had great designs to use the virtual thunderstorm software in explaining some of the phenomena seen in severe thunderstorms, but alas never got to it. If there is a next time...

An important lesson I learned at this workshop was the great utility that simple models (unlike the ones I regularly use) have in both education and research, and in teaching higher level meteorology courses I will certainly look for guidance from all the material I've obtained through this workshop.

I meant to talk to our department's climate scientists here about EdGCM and its use, but I honestly can't remember whether I did that oh so long ago or not...I'll have to revisit that.