Description

Climate change is modifying the thermal structure of lakes around the globe. Because it is difficult to predict how lakes will respond to the many different aspects of climate change (e.g., altered temperature, precipitation, wind, etc.), many researchers are using models to manipulate climate scenarios and simulate lake responses. Lake simulation models provide a powerful tool for exploring the sensitivity of lake thermal structure characteristics to weather.

In this module, students will learn how to set up a lake model and "force" the model with climate scenarios of their own design to test hypotheses about how lakes may change in the future. Once students have mastered running one climate scenario for their lake, they will learn how to use distributed computing tools to scale up and run hundreds of different climate scenarios for their lakes.

The overarching goal of this module is for students to explore new modeling and computing tools while learning fundamental concepts about how climate change will affect lakes. The A-B-C structure of this module makes it flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

Project EDDIE (Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry & Exploration) is a community effort aimed at developing teaching resources and instructors that address quantitative reasoning and scientific concepts using open inquiry of publicly available data. Project EDDIE modules are designed with an A-B-C structure to make them flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

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