Day 77 - Thanksgiving

Since my last blog entry the past two weeks have been rather busy. The big USC vs UCLA American Football game took place in which we won! Enrolment for the next quarter also is now coming to a close. As emphasised in my previous post, I greatly desired to enrol in Hydrology and Political Geography, two modules of which I feel will be a bit more in line with the knowledge I acquired at UCL. Thankfully, I was able to enrol in both classes despite the high demand surrounding them; I can now look forward to starting them after Christmas and developing my knowledge in both subject areas.

In this post I wish to discuss more about Applied Climatology and how it has compared to what I have studied previously in the UK. Despite having high hopes for this course, I feel underwhelmed by the substance of the lectures. Rather than being technical and going into detail about processes in the climate, the class has been structured into 10 rather vague lectures in which do little more than outline climate processes and their interactions with the environment. In my first blog entry I made reference to Chagnon (1995) definition of Applied Climatology with the 3-ringed theory. For me, this was an interesting way to approach the area of climatology and I expected that the class would explore the topic through the lens of Chagnon giving equal emphasis on each aspect of applied climatology. Despite this however, I feel there has been an overemphasis on the ‘inner ring’, which comprises of interpretation and generation of climatic data (Chagnon, 1995). This could be seen as one of the flaws with using the quarterly system instead of the semester system which is hotly debated between students and teachers in the United States, with such little amount of class time, one can barely scratch the surface of the main objectives of the module, something that I believe not even extensive reading could fix. In addition to this, a lot of the reading is based on IPCC workings; the ones that feature in my reader however are out-dated, using the 2001 publication. In terms of differences between what I’ve learnt in the UK and US related to climatology through this module provides no distinctions of interest in terms of perceptions and paradigms. The notable differences are present in how engaging, and stimulating the content taught has been. The science is essentially the same, the IPCC is an intergovernmental body and widely considered of great importance in providing up-to-date data and assessments both in the US and the UK. Yet, I have found that climatology has been much superior and interestingly taught in my experiences at UCL.

As I write this blog entry it is torrentially precipitating outside, a sight that is not often seen in this semi-arid area of California. This proves noteworthy as it provides a momentary break from what has been the worst drought in California’s history (figure 1), or at least since 1895 according to the standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index (SEPI) for California (NOAA, 2014).

 

FIgure 1. NOAA Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index for California

The subsequent blog post will be in a few weeks as final exams are fast approaching! After this busy period I shall be returning to the UK and providing a summary of my findings.

Changnon, S. A. (1995) ‘Applied climatology: A glorious past, and uncertain future’, American Meteorological Society, 379–393.

NOAA (2014) SPEI California Drought through to October 2014. [WWW.] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/; [Accessed: November 30, 2014]