Living with changing climate

Living with changing climate is a masters’ level course for those interested in the use of open climate and weather data for real-life climate mitigation and adaptation actions.

The course provides a solid introduction to current climate mitigation and adaptation actions and action gaps, worldwide. Sectoral examples describe how weather and climate risks form, how impact chains are investigated and how risk management plans are developed and implemented.

After introducing the concepts of weather and climate precisely, it is taught where to find open weather and climate data, and how to access, process and visualize it. Practical examples and case descriptions introduce how weather and climate data are currently used in decision-making. During the course the course participants get to practice their research and development skills through individual and teamwork assignments. The teamwork assignments teach them to interview the chosen organization, find out their weather and climate data needs, and suggest a solution to it based on what they have learned about data and applications during the course.

Course learning goals:
After the completing the course, the participant

1. is familiar with the real-life actions and action gaps in climate change adaptation and mitigation at different levels of society.

2. can explain the concepts of weather and climate and is familiar with distributions of weather events and their extremes and their connection to climate.

3. knows how to critically examine public discussion on weather and climate phenomena and claims, and can explain the difference between local & global, current vs. future phenomena.

4. knows how to investigate and communicate how weather and climate data is used in real organizations and businesses, and what kind of needs for weather and climate data arise from organizational decision-making, culture, operations and/or its stakeholders.

5. knows how to find open weather and climate data for a defined location and region and has an overview of different types of observations and models openly available.

6. knows what kind of applications there are for giving practical/usable information regarding the different aspects of the climate system.

Course level: Masters

Pre-requisites: Climate.now or similar knowledge; Statistical tools for climate and atmospheric science recommended.

Scope: 5 ECTS

Available languages: ENG

Authors: University of Helsinki, Finnish Meteorological Institute, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Where to study: University of Helsinki (course code ATM389).

Link to study material: https://digicampus.fi/course/view.php?id=4738