Introduction to Atmospheric Sciences

Project Description and Grading Policy

Your class project involves investigating a topic and writing a term paper of up to 6 pages of text with up to 4 additional pages dedicated to figures and graphs.

It is up to you to choose the topic for the project, and there is a great deal of flexibility in how you approach the project. You should select a topic that you find interesting and would like to pursue in greater depth than is covered in class. Some examples of potential project topics include: the stratospheric ozone hole, the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, hurricanes, the formation of tornados, cloud identification, El Nino, cyclone development, applications of atmospheric sciences to societal problems, weather forecasting, etc.

Your first step after a selecting a topic will be to compile a list of resources that you will use to investigate the topic. The quality of the sources is as important as the number of sources. In particular, references to web-based sources should be considered very carefully. A written proposal (1-2 paragraphs is fine) describing your topic, along with a list of sources and references that you plan to use, is due on Friday 30th October. Rejected proposals must be re-written and re-submitted within one week.

Both the proposal and the term paper must be typewritten (e.g., set with a word processor). The paper will be graded based on the following criteria: quality of content, application of class concepts, quality of writing (organization, grammar, spelling, punctuation), and references. The term paper is due on Tuesday 8th December.