The dynamics of droughts, 7.5 hp
This course will examine the phenomena of drought through the lens of the various research tools we may use to study it. Students will come away from the course with a deeper understanding of the literature, theory, and applications of drought research for a wide variety of drought studies, from regional and seasonal predictions to long-term global climate change projections.
Description of the course
The primary workload will consist of weekly journal studies and discussions, some of which will be led by students or student groups. Optional python labs will be available for students wishing to deepen their understanding of the technical tools used for drought research, but no background in programming is required for this course. A list of key topics to be covered in the semester is:
I. Basic concepts, definitions, and drought “indices”
- Types of droughts (e.g., meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socio-economic)
- Precipitation based indices
- Precipitation minus evapotranspiration indices
- Indices that factor in soil moisture “memory”
II. Measuring, monitoring, and modeling soil moisture (challenges and opportunities)
- Models of soil moisture: simple "leaky bucket" models, land surface models and data assimilation tools (e.g. NLDAS, GLDAS)
- In situ measurements
- Remote sensing
III. Drought dynamics
- Causes and consequences
- Moisture budget basics
- Interannual to decadal variability
- Insights from numerical modeling experiments
IV. Drought in a changing climate
- Drought in global climate models
- Drought indices in models
- Soil moisture in models
- Future drought risks
How is the course organized?
The course revolves round ten weekly meetings at 10-12 am, starting on 4 February; there is some flexibility on times and dates once the group has started. The meetings will be organized around topics and joint reading and discussion of original papers, and some of these discussions will be led by students or groups of students. At the end there will be a two-week project, based on preexisting Python-based labs.
Examination
The successful presentation of the project work will be the examination of the course.
Schedule
The course starts on Friday 4 February 2022 at 10am and meets every week at that time for the following ten weeks.
Literature
The course is based on original journal papers.
Teachers
The teacher will be professor Toby Ault (tobyault@gmail.com), visiting professor at IMI during the spring. Course responsible will be professor Michael Tjernström (michaelt@misu.su.se) at MISU, organizing the course.
Last updated: January 11, 2022
Source: MISU