POGO CofE 2021

Unit on Timescales of Element Cycling in the Ocean-Analytical, Experimental and (radio) Tracer Approaches

Unit on Statistics in R

Unit on Marine Spatial Planning

Unit on Science Communication

Unit on Statistics

Unit on Physical Oceanography II

Unit on Physical Oceanography I

Unit on GIS.

Unit on Ocean Modelling.

The Physics of the Climate System

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”

This statement in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013 is based on a wide variety of climate observations and model simulations.

 The present characteristics of the climate system are a product of a long-term evolution determined by external forcing (sun, volcanoes) and internal interactions within the climate system, which is composed of atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, land surfaces, and the marine and terrestrial biosphere. Until 250 years ago, the interference of man was small, and climate variations were a product of natural processes and interactions alone.

Since the beginning of industrialisation the composition of the atmosphere, especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, have significantly increased. In addition, the character of the land surface has been largely modified through land-use and land-cover change through human activities. Most of the observed global warming during the past 100 years is attributed to these anthropogenic impacts.

This course provides the evidence of climate variations on all time-scales and their response to human impacts, and presents an introduction to the physics of the climate system, with a special focus on atmosphere, ocean and ice. Exercises in the afternoons will deal with specific climate processes and with the energy balance of the Earth and other planets.

Special topics are:

·       evidence for climate variations on a variety of time-scales from in-situ measurements, remote sensing techniques, climate archives, and palaeo-climate proxies,

·       physical properties of the climate system and its components (atmosphere, ocean, ice),

·       physical processes relevant for climate variability and change,

·       simple models of the climate system (energy balance models, Daisy World),

·       climate scenarios from complex coupled climate models,

·       new results from the latest IPCC reports.

To get familiar with each other and with the technical issues of the teaching tools. Get to know administrative issues, learn how to apply the folderscope and the VPN server, introduction to netiquette and good scientific practice. Get to know the hosting institutes, the Nippon Foundation and the POGO consortium

Unit on chemical oceanography, nutrients and plankton.

This 2 week-long module on Ocean Data Management is part of the Nippon Foundation-POGO Centre of Excellence (NF-POGO CofE) and hosted by AWI (cohort 2021). This module is part of an intensive training course for young professionals at the post-graduate level, ten months in duration, with an intake of ten trainees per year. The course is sponsored by the Nippon Foundation and hosted by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.

This module provides a comprehensive introduction to a wide variety of earth science datasets, formats and analysis software. Students will learn and practice methods using a common ocean area, and they are expected to create a personal project of data products for a marine region of their own choosing. Personal projects are presented by the students at the end of the course.