CMMAP Proposed Content Outline

These are the topics that strike me as being at the intersection of the science of the CMMAP project and the types of things that are commonly taught in Earth science, physics, chemistry, or geography classes.

1. Clouds
   1. Types of clouds & locations in atmosphere
   2. Role of clouds in climate models
   3. Cloud formation
      1. Cloud Nucleation Centers & aerosols (including sources of aerosols - dust from deserts, smoke from human activities, salt from oceans, sulfur compounds from plankton)
      2. Cloud microphysics (including surface tension)
      3. Warm vs. cold clouds
      4. Physics of phase changes of water (supersaturation, condensation, freezing, evaporation, thermodynamics and heat exchange associated with these processes)
2. Modeling
   1. General issues involved in modeling
      1. What is a model?
      2. Types of models - 1D, 2D, 3D, etc.
      3. Resolution
   2. Climate modeling
      1. Overview
      2. Coupled (atmosphere & oceans) modeling
   3. Difficulties of modeling clouds - multiscale, etc.
3. Earth radiation balance and climate modeling
   1. Energy in the climate system
   2. Insolation - daily variation, variation by latitude, seasonal variation
   3. Greenhouse effect
   4. Albedo
   5. IR and the EM spectrum
   6. Heat resevoirs - air vs. water vs. land
4. Atmosphere
   1. Weather
   2. Layers of the atmosphere and their properties
   3. Atmospheric chemistry
5. Water cycle
   1. Rainfall, evaporation
6. Geography
   1. geography of moisture - locations of deserts, high-rainfall areas (rainforests, etc.), other wet/dry regions (rainshadow of mountains, lake effect snow, etc.) and causes of them
   2. geographical differences between northern & southern hemispheres; between tropics, mid-latitudes, and polar regions; between oceans and land
   3. visualizations of seasonal variation of geography of cloud cover, rainfall, etc.