MOOC

Course Introduction
Week 1 (121 min video, 53 slides)
  • Module 1. Introduction
    1. Reading 10 min - Course Overview
    2. Reading 10 min - Acknowledgement of sources of course material
    3. Video 15 min - A crash introduction to numerical weather prediction (Week 1 - 1st video)
  • Module 2. Frameworks and Theories
    1. Video 6 min - Introduce MPAS-A (Week 1 - 2nd video)
    2. Video 22 min - Advantages of variable-resolution unstructured mesh (Week 1 - 3rd video)
    3. Video 24 min - Foundations of doing weather simulations in an unstructured mesh, Finite Volume Method  (Week 1 - 4th video)
    4. Reading 1 hour - Theories
      1. Wikipedia - Finite Volume Method
      2. MPAS Tutorial - MPAS Overview Slides 
  • Module 3. Online Programming Framework
    1. Video 4 min - CPAS Visualization System  (Week 1 - 5th video)
    2. Video 15 min - Python programming - High-level packages (Week 1 - 6th video)
  • Module 4. Operations of the Online Programming Framework
    1. Reading - Setting up an account in CPAS is a must for practices for the course 
    2. Video 21 min - Lab 1: Start Jupyter Server & copy course material (Week 1 - 7th video)
    3. Video 6 min - Classwork: Using xarray and NetCDF files, xarray.open_dataset() (Week 1 - 8th video)
    4. Reading 20 min - Following written instructions - Lab 2: Automatic information extraction following CF convention 
  • Module 5. Advanced xarray usage for big data
    1. Video 8 min - Chunking and parallel processing in xarray (Week 1 - 9th video)
    2. Reading 30 min - Following written instructions - Lab 3: Make multi-cores busy 
  • Assignment 1 (10 MC Questions, 80% to pass) 
Week 2 (84 min video, 46 slides)
  1. Module 6. Discretization and numerical stability
    1. Video 11 min - Numerical stability – CFL condition (Week 2 - 1st video)
    2. Video 13 min - Time stepping and Computational resources issues (Week 2 - 2nd video)
    3. Video 6 min - Unique features of CPAS – HTS and CUMG for flexible time and space discretization (Week 2 - 3rd video)
    4. Video 5 min - (Optional) OLAM-based spatial algorithm (Week 2 - 4th video)
  2. Module 7. Resolution and computational cost consideration
    1. Video 9 min - Flexible space and time discretization techniques together (Week 2 - 5th video)
  3. Lab 1. Using the CPAS Visualization system to visualize your mesh
    1. Reading 2 hours -  Global circulation and running your first CPAS mesh generation job
    2. Video 10 min - Find the result of your job in CPAS Visualization system (Week 2 - 6th video)
    3. Video 17 min - Plotting mesh with Geoviews and Matplotlib/bokeh (Week 2 - 7th video)
  4. Module 8. Unstructured mesh in detail
    1. Video 11 min - Geometry of an unstructured mesh (Week 2 - 8th video)
    2. Video 9 min - Terrain-following hybrid coordinate in MPAS-A (Week 2 - 9th video) 
    3. Reading 30 min - MPAS-A Mesh structure slides
  5. Lab 2: Inspecting the NetCDF file representing an unstructured mesh 
    1. Reading 30 min - Iinspecting a cell's neighbour cells 
    2. Video 3 min - Undesirable behaviour of the current mesh customization algorithm  (Week 2 - 10th video)
  6. Assignment 2
    1. 10 MC Questions, 80% to pass
    2. Run your first Real Simulation job
      1. Order a simulation job for a date in January to simulate synoptic circulation
      2. Keep the resulting data for visualization and inspection next week.
Week 3 (141 min Video, 64 Slides)
  1. Module 9. Practical aspects in numerical weather prediction
    1. Video 9 min - Real-time forecast schedule (Week 3 - 1st video)
    2. Video 8 min - Mesh design and grid spacing considerations (Week 3 - 2nd video)
    3. Video 3 min - Global atmospheric model as an Initial Value Problem (Week 3 - 3rd video)
    4. Reading - About Initial Value Problem & Boundary Value Problem 
    5. Video 2 min - Choice of Initial Condition data on the cpas.earth online platform (Week 3 - 4th video)
    6. Video 5 min - Spin-up of atmospheric model (Week 3 - 5th video)
    7. Reading 1 hour - Stull’s NWP chapter up to State Imbalance & Spin-up: Practical Meteorology Section 20.5.1 
    8. Video 5 min - Simulation outputs (Week 3 - 6th video)
  2. Module 10. Physics parameterization
    1. Video 22 min - Introduction to physics parameterization (Week 3 - 7th video)
    2. Video 26 min - Parameterizing cloud and precipitation – microphysics scheme and convection scheme (Week 3 - 8th video)
    3. Video 10 min - Turbulence modeling (Week 3 - 9th video)
    4. Video 17 min - Planetary boundary layer scheme (Week 3 - 10th video)
    5. Video 21 min - How to learn more about Physics Parameterization Schemes (Week 3 - 11th video)
    6. Reading 10 min - Choosing options on the CPAS online platform
  3. Module 11. Ensemble forecasting
    1. Video 13 min - Introducing Ensemble forecasting (Week 3 - 12th video)
    2. Reading 1 hour - Various sources of the Ensemble forecasting teaching material 
  4. Assignment 3 (10 MC Questions, 80% to pass) 
Week 4 (94 min video, jupyter notebook tutorial 1)
  1. Introduction
    1. Reading 2 min - Overview for the next few weeks - python visualization
  2. Module 12. Basics of numpy 
    1. Video 13 min - Handle numpy arrays (Week 4 - 1st video)
    2. Video 12 min - Operations on numpy arrays (Week 4 - 2nd video)
  3. Module 13. Data Manipulation with xarray 
    1. Video 19 min - Handle xarray dataset (Week 4 - 3rd video)
    2. Video 9 min - Higher level computation: groupby and reindex (Week 4 - 4th video)
  4. Module 14. Basic data visualization with matplotlib 
    1. Video 11 min - Basic commands for plotting with matplotlib (Week 4 - 5th video)
    2. Video 15 min - Visualize static and vector data in 2D plots (Week 4 - 6th video)
    3. Video 3 min - Features overlaying (Week 4 - 7th video)
  5. Module 15. Creating interactive plots with hvplot 
    1. Video 12 min - Plotting with hvplot (Week 4 - 8th video)
  6. Assignment 4 (15 MC Questions, 80% to pass)
Week 5 (74 min video, jupyter notebook tutorial 2)
  1. Module 16. Plotting maps with cartopy 
    1. Video 8 min - Create base map (Week 5 - 1st video)
    2. Video 6 min - Dealing with map projections (Week 5 - 2nd video)
    3. Video 11 min - Adding map features (Week 5 - 3rd video)
  2. Module 17. Plotting maps in hvplot interactive plots 
    1. Video 10 min - Tiles on hvplot maps (Week 5 - 4th video)
  3. Module 18. Techniques in atmospheric data visualization
    1. Video 9 min - Masking (Week 5 - 5th video)
    2. Video 2 min - Contour smoothing (Week 5 - 6th video)
  4. Module 19. Visualizing the vertical profile of the atmosphere
    1. Video 14 min - Global circulation of the atmosphere (Week 5 - 7th video)
    2. Video 14 min - Vertical cross-section of a tropical cyclone (Week 5 - 8th video)
  5. Assignment 5 (15 MC Questions, 80% to pass)
Week 6 (120 min video, jupyter notebook tutorial 3)
  1. Module 20. Data manipulation with pandas for observation data
    1. Video 17 min - Manipulating dataframes (Week 6 - 1st video)
    2. Video 14 min - Dealing with datetime and plot function in pandas (Week 6 - 2nd video)
  2. Module 21. Dealing with tabular data
    1. Video 10 min - Visualize the locations of weather stations (Week 6 - 3rd video)
    2. Video 12 min - Visualize radiosonde data with Skew-T log-P graph (Week 6 - 4th video)
  3. Module 22. Visualization of unstructured model data
    1. Video 12 min - Contour plots (Week 6 - 5th video)
    2. Video 9 min - Vector field plot (Week 6 - 6th video)
  4. Module 23. Evaluate your model result
    1. Video 15 min - Interpolation (Week 6 - 7th video)
    2. Video 8 min - Verify your results with observation data (Week 6 - 8th video)  
    3. Video 23 min - Verify your results with reanalysis data (Week 6 - 9th video)
  5. Assignment 6 (10 MC Questions, 80% to pass)
Week 7 (35 min Video)
  1. Module 24 (Optional). More advanced plottings
    1. Video 17 min - Visualizating 2D data with holoviews.TriMesh (Week 7 - 1st video)
    2. Video 13 min - 3D visualization with plotly -  Hong Kong terrain (Week 7 - 2nd video)
    3. Video 5 min - 3D visualization with plotly - Vertical Structure of a Typhoon - cloud fraction (Week 7 - 3rd video)
  2. Reading - Summarizing the course
  3. Peer-graded Assignment 

Use the CPAS online platform to simulate the opposite circulations over continents and oceans in winter and summer (Figure 11.31 of Practical Meteorology). Write a 3-5 page report by filling in the report template provided and answer the questions therein. You may continue with the winter real simulation in the assignment in week 2, or make additional trials. Make global plots of MSLP contour and surface wind field (at 10 meters above ground level). Make the summer counterpart after you succeed in the winter case.