This course introduces the principles of modern meteorology to non-science majors, with an emphasis on scientific and human issues associated with severe weather events. Includes description, methods of prediction, and impacts of blizzards, hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornadoes, lightning, floods, and firestorms.

Learning Objectives

  • Define fundamental terminology and scientific elements of meteorology (weather); 
  • Explain the importance of each major meteorological system as related to micro-, meso-, synoptic, and global scales that comprise specific weather phenomena; 
  • Read, apply, and interpret basic elements of weather reporting data and information; 
  • Examine and apply various basic methods for analyzing and forecasting weather; 
  • Evaluate, apply, and assess basic principles of weather system analysis as related to fundamental concepts of characterizing and predicting global climate changes and global warming.

In this course, you will

  • Learn practical, fun, and useful ways to obtain weather data and information that will be beneficial to you now and in the future;
  • Take observed weather conditions and report that information to class members with a focus on related human activities like outdoor activities, business concerns, etc.;
  • Discover how weather on other planets compares to Earth’s weather system;
  • Learn to discuss, in general terms, how the nature of weather eventually leads to the ways we characterize climate.