- Instructor: Brad Lipovsky, bpl7@uw.edu
- Term: Spring Quarter 2022
- General Education Requirements: NW and QSR
- Course Prerequisites: None.
- Link to Course JupyterHub -- Requires UW NetID
The cryosphere is the part of a planet with frozen water. This course covers glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, icebergs, permafrost, lake ice, and snow on Earth and other planets. Emphasis is placed on human impacts. Course evaluation is based on quantitative assignments with significant coding and quantitative writing components. Background in neither STEM nor coding is required and there will be support for students new to these disciplines.
Evaluation consists of:
- Several equally-weighted Quantitative Assignments, each with several problems (90% of course grade)
- In-class problems submitted using a Classroom Response System (10% of grade)
The Quantitative Assignments are what makes this course fun.
- Each Quantitative Assignment will consist of several problems. A typical problem will involve a student being given a prewritten Jupyter notebook with > 90% of the code already written. The work to be completed will consist of either small modifications to the code --suitable for students with no coding experience-- or writing brief quantitative descriptions of datasets, methods, or results.
- Quantitative Assignments will be unique to each individual student. For example, in one assignment each student will analyze a different glacier and no two students will analyze the same glacier. However, because the same analysis will be performed on every glacier, the work will benefit from working together in groups.
- Throughout the course, several in-class problems will be assigned and become due during a lecture sesion. To encourage attendance, the dates of the in-class problems won’t be announced ahead of time.
- Grades for each problem will be either zero (never handed in), one (complete and bug-free), or ½ (incomplete or buggy). Each assignment may be resubmitted for evaluation as many times as desired within the bounds set by the availability of the teaching staff and the duration of the term.
- Grades will be calculated by rescaling the sum of the grades for all problems (in-person or in the Assignments) to 4.0. For example, consider a student who attempts all problems but doesn’t complete half of them. Half of their scores would be 0.5 and half would be 1.0. This student would receive a grade of 3.0.
Course lectures (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) will focus on presenting new material (Mondays and Wednesdays) and the quantitative assignments (Fridays). Coding studio time will emphasize hands-on work with the quantitative assignments.
- Understand the basic observations and datasets that are the basis for our knowledge of the cryosphere (Quantitative Assignment #1).
- Be able to explain --using the principles of mass, momentum, and energy conservation-- the occurrence, motion, and stability of various aspects of the cryosphere on Earth and other planets (Quantitative Assignment #2).
- Analyze the dynamics of various components of the cryosphere using simplified statistical (Quantitative Assignment #1), physics-based (Quantitative Assignment #2), and time series techniques (Quantitative Assignment #3).
- Describe and evaluate cryosphere--societal connections (All Quantitative Assignments).
- Create extensions to existing computer codes in order to analyze components of the Cryosphere (All Quantitative Assignments).
- Be able to articulate Open Science principles (All Quantitative Assignments).
Arabic numbers approximately correspond to week.
- Overview of the major components of Earth’s cryosphere, the history and future of ice on Earth, and overview of ice beyond Earth
- Overview of the basic physical processes of the cryosphere, conservation of mass, momentum, and energy
- Human and social aspects of the cryosphere
- Natural hazard impacts on communities
- Seasonal Ice and Snow (Slides)
- Motivation: food, water, and economic security
- How snow forms, falls, compacts, and melts. Types of snow crystals. Snow formations in nature.
- Seasonal ice on rivers and lakes
- Winter watershed hydrology
- Snow avalanches: types, occurrence, dynamics, hazards.
- Projections of seasonal snow change and their certainty
Quantitative Assignment #1 Thermodynamics of lake ice growth
- Permafrost (Slides)
- Motivation: Impact of permafrost decline on Arctic first people.
- Permafrost distribution.
- Melt dynamics: landscape evolution, impact on the carbon cycle
- The challenge of building and infrastructure construction in the presence of permafrost soils
- Projections of future permafrost change and their certainty
- Motivation: Impact of sea ice decline on Arctic first people.
- Overview of the formation, structure, evolution, and mechanics of sea ice.
- Projections of future sea ice change and their certainty (Will sea ice disappear in our lifetime?)
Quantitative Assignment #2: Force balance and icebergs
- Motivation: a sensitive indicator of climate change
- Case study: Ötzi, the ~5300 year old natural mummy found inside a glacier in the Alps
- Glacier mass and energy balance
- Glacier dynamics, Part 1: ice flow and sliding
- Glacier length changes as a sensitive indicator of climate.
- Projections of future glacier change and their certainty
- The Ice Sheets: Antarctica and Greenland (Slides; In-Class Writing Assignment)
- Motivation: potential for catastrophic sea level rise
- Glacier dynamics, Part 2: marine ice sheets
- How do we know the ice sheets are changing? Mass changes, elevation changes, and velocity changes.
- Sea level rise. Global budget. Isostasy, eustacy, and non-eustasy.
- Projections of future ice sheet change and their certainty
- Impacts: inundation risk for coastal communities around the world
Quantitative Assignment #3: Data scientific analysis of mountain glaciers
- Glaciation on Earth: The Pleistocene (Slides, Writing Assignment)
- Motivation: The Pleistocene offers a glimpse into different climate states of an Earth not too different from our own.
- Theory of ice age cycles
- Glacial geology: subglacial erosion, small-, intermediate-, and large-scale erosional forms, landscapes. Glacial sediments. Paleo-glaciological reconstructions.
- Glaciation on Earth: Deep-time Glaciations and Snowball Earth (Slides, Writing Assignment)
- Motivation: origin of life on Earth.
- Snowball glaciations and the evolution of life
- Present-day life in the cryosphere as an analog to understand the origin of life and the search for life on other planets. Supra-, sub-, and pro-glacial ecosystems.
- Emphasis on the wide range of past Earth climates
Quantitative Assignment #4: Time series analysis. The notion of time scale as evidenced Earth’s history of glaciation.
- Glaciations on other planets (Slides, Writing Assignment)
- Motivation: is there life on other planets?
- Ice Shells: Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, and Triton
- Ice sheets and cryo-volcanism on Mars
- Superionic ice: the deep interiors of Uranus and Neptune
- Water-ice mountains with solid nitrogen glaciers: Pluto and Triton
- Night-side ice sheets on tidally-locked exoplanets
- Review Lecture (Writing Assignment). Overview of course learning objectives.
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request Form.
The University of Washington supports an inclusive learning environment where diverse perspectives are recognized, respected, and seen as a source of strength. In this course, I will strive to create welcoming spaces where everyone feels included and engaged regardless of their social and cultural backgrounds.
It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law, including establishing reasonable accommodations for all students. If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please activate your accommodations via myDRS so that we can discuss how they will be implemented in this course. If you have not yet established services through DRS, and you have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations, contact DRS directly (disability.uw.edu) to set up an Access Plan. DRS facilitates the interactive process that establishes reasonable accommodations. Conditions requiring accommodation include but are not limited to: mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts.
The University of Washington Student Conduct Code (WAC 478-121) defines prohibited academic and behavioral conduct and describes how the University holds students accountable. I expect that you will know and follow university policies regarding all forms of academic and other misconduct.
Acts of academic misconduct include: Cheating: unauthorized assistance in person and/or online for assignments, quizzes, tests or exams using another student’s work without permission and instructor authorization allowing anyone to take a course, assignment or exam for you without instructor authorization Falsification: intentional use of falsified data, information or records Plagiarism: representing the work of others as your own without giving appropriate credit to the original author(s) Unauthorized collaboration: working with other students in the course on assignments, quizzes or exams without permission Engaging in behavior prohibited by an instructor Multiple submissions of the same work in different courses without instructor permission Deliberately damaging or destroying student work to gain advantage Unauthorized recording, and/or subsequent dissemination of instructional content
If these definitions are not clear to you, please contact me or your TAs so that we can review them with you. It is important that you fully understand what is and is not permissible in this course.
Any suspected cases of academic misconduct will be handled according to university regulations. For more information, see the College of the Environment’s Academic Misconduct Policy and the Community Standards and Student Conduct website.
The College of the Environment Student Academic Grievance Procedures provide mechanisms for enrolled students to address academic problems or grievances in an equitable, respectful and timely manner. Academic grievances are defined as those involving conflicts between a student or students and their course instructors (including faculty and teaching assistants) or research mentor(s) with respect to differences arising within credit-bearing work and while the student is registered at the University of Washington. If you have or are experiencing such a conflict in this class, and have not, cannot, or do not wish to attempt resolution with me, I encourage you to explore additional options open to you by accessing the website above.
If you feel unsafe or at-risk while taking this or any course, please contact SafeCampus, 206-685-7233 anytime where you can anonymously discuss safety and well-being concerns for yourself or others. SafeCampus can provide individualized support, discuss short- and long-term solutions, and connect you with additional resources when requested. For a broader range of resources and assistance see the Husky Health & Well-Being website.