Academic Activities:

In addition to our many research interests, we have also strived to provide breadth and depth to the educational mission of the University. As part of this involvement, I have developed two textbooks—one an introductory undergraduate textbook on Weather and Climate published by John Wiley & Sons in 2008 and the other a calculus-based, upper-division undergraduate and graduate textbook on Climate and the Environment. In addition, I have helped create classroom demonstrations designed to enhance students' interest in weather and climate phenomena (at right). I have also been actively involved in mentoring the next generation of interdisciplinary climate scientists, chairing 7 Ph.D. students’ research committees and sitting on the committees of 15 others; in all 20 refereed journal articles have resulted from this involvement. Finally I have been regularly developing new courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including ones on extreme weather, ocean dynamics, and climate and the environment

Textbook Development:

Anderson, B.T. and Strahler, A., 2008: Visualzing Weather and Climate, John Wiley & Sons, 500pp. – An investigation of climate and weather phenomena for use in non-math based introductory courses

Anderson, B.T., 2009: Climate and the Environment, 200pp. - An advanced, calculus-based undergraduate/introductory graduate level text designed specifically for Environmental Science majors; presently in use in draft form

Courses Taught:

GE101 – The Atmosphere: An introduction to weather and climate. Introductory lower-division undergraduate course. Topics include meteorology and day-to-day variations in weather, global and continental wind and pressure patterns, climates of the world and climatic change (Sample Lecture)

WR/GE 150 – Extreme Weather and Climate. Lower-division undergraduate writing course. Topics include dynamics of extreme weather and climate events, impacts of such events both upon individuals and societies, and the description and investigation of these impacts within historical/research writing

GE310 – Climate and the Environment. Calculus-based upper-division undergraduate course. Topics include water and energy in the atmosphere; land surface processes; atmospheric dynamics and its general circulation; weather systems and their relation to climate; ocean dynamics; and climate change (Course Flyer; Sample Lecture)

GE504 – Physics of Climate. Calculus-based graduate course. Topics include atmospheric composition and thermodynamics; radiative transfer; the global energy balance; land-surface energy balance; the global hydrologic cycle; atmospheric dynamics and its general circulation; ocean dynamics; climate feedbacks and forcings (Sample Lecture)

GE/ES 507 – Dynamical Oceanography. Calculus-based upper-division undergraduate and graduate course. Topics include physical properties of seawater; major current systems and water masses; overview of essential ocean dynamics; simple waves; deepwater formation and the thermohaline circulation; and the coupled atmosphere-ocean system and its interaction with climate variability (Course Flyer; Sample Lecture)

GE830 – Climate Seminar: Data resources for the climate sciences. Graduate seminar course. Topics include data resource availability, utility of disparate data for climate change and environmental science research, presentation and scientific communication techniques