Image: Long’s Peak and the Colorado Front Range, Boulder County, Colorado
This is a set of resources that I (Richard B. (Ricky) Rood) have collected for my classes and the Applied Climate program at University of Michigan.
Recorded Lectures:
- Link to Lectures: https://openclimate.org/category/lectures/
Classes:
- Climate Change Problem Solving (Climate 480):
- Climate Change in Planning and Design (Climate 530)
I also teach or have taught, Climate Practicum (Climate 591, 592), Preparation for the United Nations Conference of the Parties (with Avik Basu) (EAS 505, Climate 531), Climate Informatics (with Paul Edwards) as well as Atmospheric Dynamics and Climate Physics.
- Tim Muhich’s Honors Course at Battle Creek Area Mathematics and Science Center (YouTube): This was joint project with University of Michigan.
Topical Collections
These sites are collections of materials.
- Climate Change News Websites: Some of these are strong advocates, but generally accurate representations of things.
- Climate Change Advocacy and Information: Mostly charitable organizations with climate change as a priority.
- What Can I Do About Climate Change: A short set of blogs and links on what people can do that makes a difference.
- Temperature Updates: A collection of websites that provide the temperature updates that you see on the news.
- It Still Gets Cold: If the Earth is warming, why does it still get so cold?
- Rhetoric, Misinformation, and Disinformation: Brochure: The Everyday Conversation Guide to Climate Change
- Model Introduction: Broadcast Meteorologists: A general introduction to models and modeling. The simplest you will find.
- Analysis of Trump Elections and Transition: Set of blogs and articles in late 2016 and 2017. They stand up pretty well. Also collections of news articles during the Trump Administration
- Press Clippings: OpenClimate.org Interviews, Articles, and Mentions in the Media.
OpenClimate Tumblr Site:
I use Tumblr to capture news cycles and collect articles of special interest. I like it because of its very easy tags. I try to adhere to a controlled vocabulary, a limited number of tags.
- Those tags and links, the controlled vocabulary, are at this link.
One of the more useful collections for students is on job finding, careers, job market. These collections can be linked from the main page or the controlled vocabulary link. Here is the link for “job finding”.
Blogs:
1. For 10 years I wrote for Wunderground.com.
There is an archive here. Many links internal to the blogs do not work, but most are readable.
And I have a catalogue here that I use to mine the Wunderground blogs
Catalogue in google sheets: Blog Project.
2. I wrote for the American Meteorological Society at ClimatePolicy.org. (no longer online)
3. I write for Michigan Today, a University of Michigan publication distributed, monthly, to 400,000 people.
It is called Climate Blue.
The table below links to all of the Climate Blue columns and has some searchable key words and topics
| Title | Date | Description / Keywords (flat search) |
|---|---|---|
| Flooded with reality | 20241018 | Flooding, Flood Trends, Asheville, FEMA, Conspiracy, Average Return Interval |
| I feel the earth squish under my feet | 20240920 | Flooding, Global Floods, Warming Ocean, All Storms record precipitation |
| The normalizing of fire season | 20240823 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Fire in Michigan |
| How to keep your head above uncharted waters | 20240628 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Flooding scenarios |
| Leveling up in Floodtown | 20240517 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Flooding scenarios |
| Scenes from and warming climate | 20240426 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Framing, Dark Woods, Wilderness, Paths |
| Order from Disorder | 20240324 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Weather is Organized, Chaos |
| Stormy Weather | 20240223 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Storms as objects |
| Living on the edge | 20240126 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Edges |
| On the surface | 20231209 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Storylines, Surface |
| Adding fuel to the fire | 20231027 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Fire stories |
| It’s time to get comfortable with complexity | 20230928 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Accumulation versus immediate impacts |
| A perfect storm of dualities and multiplicities | 20230825 | Scenario planning, Problem Solving, Uncertainty, Complexity, Temperature starts the story |
| ‘Do not breathe’ is not a good plan | 20230724 | Wildfire, Management, Climate Change, Problem solving, Communication |
| And as a reasonable man | 20230521 | Godfather, Reasonable fossil fuel use, Denial, Price of carbon |
| The problem, and the solution, is us | 20230428 | Problem solving, Retirement, Realism, Being Honest, Political Will |
| Fragmented Mediocrity | 20230324 | Problem solving, Fragmentation, Sabotage, Management, Organizational Change |
| Who Wants to See the Future Anyway | 20230224 | Telescopes, Microscopes, Discovery, Behavior, Psychology, Uncertainty, Scientific Method |
| It depends on the second meeting | 20230127 | Problem solving, Second Meeting, Communication, Continuity, Sabotage, Management, Organizational Change |
| Stars in our eyes | 20221216 | Telescopes, Microscopes, Discovery, Behavior, Psychology, Scientific Method |
| You can run but you can’t hide | 20221013 | Hurricanes, Behavior, Psychology, Protect and persist, Individual versus community |
| The allure of cycles | 20220923 | Cycles, Letters from readers, Discipline arrogance, Logical flaws, Internal variability, denial |
| The heat is on | 20220826 | Mickey Mantle, State temperature records, Cherry picking, Metrics that represent climate |
| How good are your coping skills? | 20220624 | Framing, We have knowledge to live with a changing climate, Gaining agency, History, Being honest |
| Knowledge isn't only power | 20220520 | Knowing, Fear, Loss, Certainty, Uncertainty, Framing, Taking control to reduce anxiety, Being honest |
| "Celebrating" Earth Day | 20220422 | NSF Earth Day, Champions, Realism, Political will, expectations and management, Being honest |
| Feeling insecure | 20220325 | COVID more likely to set back climate change, energy, economic, national, health security trumps climate change, expectations and management, Realism |
| We need human learning more than machine learning | 20220211 | AI, Machine Learning, Adaptation, Weather is training us, Boulder County fire |
| Thanks for he heads-up | 20211218 | Nobel Physics Prize, Wind storm that burst across the mountains and the midwest |
| Fair weather friends at COP26 | 20211119 | COP26, UN, Conference of the Parties, Analysis, Meeting Paris |
| Prepare to roll with the changes | 20211015 | What would I do, Adaptation, Thinking about floods, Individual versus community, protect and persist |
| Sweet emotion | 20210827 | Reckoning of Northwest heat and Northern Hemisphere floods, How do I cope, Psychology, Behavior, Necessary losses, being honest |
| Are we really talking about the weather? | 20210721 | Shock of Northwest heat and Northern Hemisphere floods, fighting fires and pumping water, new approaches to dealing with weather-related disasters, can't just react |
| Will the Earth be habitable in 2100? | 20210625 | Answering a reader, Conservative talk radio interview, humans are adaptable, False choice of 2030 versus "all is lost," Realism, Being honest |
| Reality Check | 20210508 | Letters from readers, Discipline arrogance, Consensus, Uncertainty, Basic versus applied research |
| The hot topic of temperature analysis | 20210325 | Letters from readers, Readers scientific analysis, Logical flaws, Ice ages, Internal variability, Things climate scientists have ignored |
| The eyes of Texas are on you | 20210226 | Texas ice storm, It still gets cold, politics of renewable energy, misinformation, use case |
| Are you experienced? | 20210129 | Trump - Biden transition, What to expect, Climate as a priority, Legislate rather then executive order |
| Looking back, moving forward | 20201217 | Year end review, COVID and climate, realism, compounding crises |
| Clean-up crew | 20201121 | Trump-Biden transition, what to expect in climate policy, what should be in climate policy |
| Fires in Colorado | 20201024 | Fire in Boulder Colorado, Increasing wild fires, Need to think of adaptation differently, cannot just respond, use case |
| Is 'normal' a thing of the past? | 20200925 | Normals and normalization, Shifting how we calculate trends, Maintaining multiple priorities, Is it healthy to re-normalize? |
| It starts with a downburst | 20200828 | Cedar Rapids derecho, Adaption will require thinking about building codes - the whole system, No one outcome |
| Doing science in public | 20200723 | Facts versus knowledge, uncertainty, uncertainty fallacy, communication |
| Collective soul | 20200625 | Being honest, Catastrophe?, Necessary losses, Proactivity to change institutions |
| It's all in the delivery | 20200521 | Michigan Biological Station (Biostation) lecture, framing, science in society, gaining control, Individual choices, collective outcomes |
| Anticipation, reaction, or something in between? | 20200422 | Duality, false choices, problem solving, expectations and management, models as guidance, COVID likely slow our response to climate change |
| Confronting our invisible enemies | 20200326 | Model-based reasoning, Models in societal response, time, exponential growth |
| Change starts at home | 20200227 | Time, At the start of rapid and accelerating change, We need to get real about adaptation, Time, Realism, What we do now matters for decades, urgency |
| Talk to me | 20200123 | Rhetoric, logic, argumentation, communications, Disinformation and Misinformation |
| These models are smarter than you think | 20191229 | Models, Models are built for purpose, Models as guidance, Models to manage uncertainty |
| Students prepare for climate summit | 20191127 | COP25, UN, Conference of the Parties, US role in COP during Trump, Local initiatives, Why have a student delegation |
| Hurricane Dorian and the Bahama Islands | 20190926 | Forecast challenges, Hurricanes and climate change, no one outcome |
| Time to act | 20190822 | Heat and floods, Variability, Echo effect |
| Climate Blue: An introduction | 20190718 | First column, Why write for a public audience, depression and optimism |