Climate in Physics Departments

Physics in the Current Climate

Looking at the type of groups that exist in most UK physics departments wouldn’t lead you to believe that physics has a role to play in climate change research. Yet tucked away in earth sciences, geography and the occasional physics department across the country, physicists are making their contribution. The field of climate modelling is one where a physicist’s skills are vitally important, com...

The role of physics departments in developing student teachers' expertise in teaching physics

In physics teacher education the challenge is to promote the development of expertise needed from physics teachers. In that close collaboration between physicist and physics education professionals is needed. This, however, poses many challenges, which are not easily met. We describe here some guidelines, based on our own experience from a pilot course for pre-service physics teacher education....

The physics of climate modeling

Stochastic physics and climate modelling

Finite computing resources limit the spatial resolution of state-of-the-art global climate simulations to hundreds of kilometres. In neither the atmosphere nor the ocean are small-scale processes such as convection, clouds and ocean eddies properly represented. Climate simulations are known to depend, sometimes quite strongly, on the resulting bulk-formula representation of unresolved processes...

Introduction. Stochastic physics and climate modelling.

Finite computing resources limit the spatial resolution of state-of-the-art global climate simulations to hundreds of kilometres. In neither the atmosphere nor the ocean are small-scale processes such as convection, clouds and ocean eddies properly represented. Climate simulations are known to depend, sometimes quite strongly, on the resulting bulk-formula representation of unresolved processes...