so I alluded to it already but how many of you have ever thought that meteorology had something to do with stars planets um asteroids meteors um or so on yeah I did when I was a child I totally did but what actually is meteorology um well believe it or not long before the study of meteors was a big thing Aristotle came along and he actually coined the term meteorology so let's talk about what meteorology actually is meteorology is actually the study of our atmosphere and all the different phenomenon that happen in it um this term was coined by Aristotle who um wrote the first book on weather called principia meteorologica the principles of meteorology um sounds like a normal everyday textbook and in this book he described weather and among other things but the main thing that he described is weather now in Aristotle's time meteors were basically um anything that fell from the sky so obviously the asteroids and meteors and comets and meteorites and all that stuff that we think of now absolutely qualifi for that but so did rain so did snowflakes so did hailstones so did the other things that are associated with weather phenomenon and so he wrote a lot about those things in this book about meteorologica and the term kind of stuck um that being said when the astronomers came along and they had to come up with a term for the study of meteors they ended up having to take something else so what they came up with what's called meteor assist like meteor assist um that's all I'm going to say about that so meteorologists um study the atmosphere um the study of meteors is part of astronomy and just a a laugh for my position at deanza my predecessor the late great Paul Olen Isaac actually um was split between meteorology and astronomy so it's it's kind of funny um but what do what do meteorologist actually do so there are so many misconceptions um so many people when they think of meteorologist they think of somebody on television hi everybody I'm Alicia Mullin with kpix5 news um and today we have a beautiful day outside we got this Ridge of high pressure bringing lots of clear weather temperatures in the low 80s a beautiful day to go to the beach but that's actually only one thing that meteorologists can do that's actually what's called broadcast meteorology but there are so many other careers in meteorology and this meme these were old memes from like 2013 um back in my day um but there's so many other things that meteorologists do um if you have watched any kind of reality TV in the last decade or two um you've probably seen shows like stormchaser or movies that feature these people who are almost like hey there's a tornado let's go drive right into it um very few meteorologists do that but that's field meteorology um and there's actually a subfield of that called incident meteorology anytime like a a disaster happens meteorologists will actually go to the side of that disaster whether it's a fire whether it's a flood whether it's a blizzard whether it's a tornado and study what in the atmosphere caused this to happen um many people think that we just stand outside and look at Clouds funny enough most weather stations are actually windowless um if you go to a National Weather Service um weather station these are actually the people who are paid by the government to write weather forecast issue warnings um and so on and in fact many broadcast meteorologists get their information from the National Weather Service um you'll find that many of their forecast offices are windowless um in fact most meteorologists are oops let me go back most meteorologists actually sit behind a computer and look at data look at model Graphics look at Satellite data look at radar data um at weather maps and analyze them um in this class you'll probably have to look at a weather map or two and and one of the reasons why I'll have you do that is that that is something that meteorologists do um there's a lot of computer programming involved there's a lot of data analysis involved um many of us think that we're Einstein um with lots of math equations and so on um meteorology can definitely be a math heavy science but it's not one of those Sciences where you're going too crazy with the math um but there's so many different things that meteorologists can do um and in fact there's so many amazing careers in meteorology um but I just always find it funny that most meteorologists actually work in windowless offices sitting at desks in front of computers and um just processing data and making forecast based off of that but that being said there are actually different subfields of meteorology that I want to talk about um there are actually three main subfields and the American Meteorological Society basically the Big Wigs of of weather here in the United States say that these three different subfields are crucial to gaining a holistic understanding of meteorology so all three of these subfields will be covered in this class and any meteorology degree that you get anywhere in the country has to include a taste of each one of these subfields so here's what they are the first one is physical meteorology this is actually my specialty this deals with the physics of the atmosphere now if you hear the word physics and want to run for the door don't worry we're not going crazy into math um we're not going crazy into any like weird like crazy physical kind of stuff like crazy physics um so don't worry if you took this class to avoid physics you're good but we are going to take a qualitative approach to understanding the physical properties of our atmosphere things like how raindrops form or um how heat gets from the Sun to the Earth um or what pressure is or how air is able to rise and sink in the atmosphere um and many of these physical properties are done on the molecular level so very very very tiny scale now the good news is that we will zoom out and eventually we will actually get into a place where we actually start talking about the motion of the atmosphere that's called Dynamics Dynamics studies wind patterns so things like rotating hurricanes things like seab breezes the Jetstream elino um Global circulations those fall under the category of Dynamics and then the third category will get into is really the bigger picture that I think most of us think about when we think about meteorology and think about weather and that is what's called synoptic and mesoscale meteorology um this deals with weather forecasting the study of storm systems so a combination of all the physical and dynamical properties that we talked about previously um this covers all of of that um and here we get to really start talking about Cyclones cold fronts warm fronts low pressure systems high pressure systems hurricanes ters um thunderstorms and all those interesting weather phenomenon that I think most people think will make this class more bearable um and so what what you kind of see here is that we start out relatively small and then we zoom out out and look at the bigger picture and I think that that's actually a really good way of structuring this class um now I am going to talk about one other thing and that is climate and climate change so 75 to 80% of this class is going to be concerning simply weather but I would be remiss and I would not do this course the honor that it should be done if we didn't at Le please talk a little bit about climate now what is climate climate is just a fancy word for the average weather for the normal weather of a location so if you live in San Jose California where I live um if you live in San Jose California um you know that we get most of our rain in the winter months and the summer months are generally dry that is a component of our climate that's all that that is that is just a component of our climate um on the other hand if you go to say New Orleans Louisiana they get lots of thunderstorms and lots of what's called convection in the summertime because they're right next to a warm ocean and have lots of heat and moisture um on the other hand if you live in Minneapolis Minnesota uh Minneapolis can be pretty balmy and humid in the summertime because there's a lot of flat land between New Orleans and Minneapolis and it's very easy for a lot of heat and moisture to push its way up into Minneapolis and makes it nice and warm in the summertime however in the winter time Minneapolis is much more exposed to cold Arctic air from the north and so people who live in Minneapolis can experience significantly cold temperatures I'm talking minus 10 20 30° in the winter time um that's climate and then talking about how what's normal in a location is Shifting that's climate change so the idea is for example here in California um we typically get our rainfall in the wintertime however Winters have become a lot more inconsistent for rain for us and the last few Winters have been nice and wet the winters before that were very dry um and that deals with climate change um and that is a second field in atmospheric science um we don't have a lot of time to devote to that in this class but we will talk about it a little bit um so just a few pictures um so physical meteorology deals with these tiny little physical properties of our atmosphere and um things like how clouds form form Believe It or Not cloud formation occurs on the molecular level when water molecules start sticking together to form droplets um and so clouds that you see are actually the result of those microphysical properties and then where those clouds move and what kind of patterns they form end up being a big part of dynamic meteorology and then the motion of these storms and the kind of air that they carry with them be it warm air cold air that ends up falling under synoptics um and then climate is what we normally get so this map right here shows a 30-year average precipitation from the period of 1981 to 2010 we use 30 years because that is the minimum number of years needed to um assume a normal distrib distribution and statistics um but we only use 30 years because we want to see how this normal changes over time uh if we instead just kept adding years adding years adding years we wouldn't be able to notice that pattern of change so every 10 years we update this um but what this shows is this just shows how precipitation rainfall snowfall and so on varies across the country and and what you can see here is that um over here on the western side of the United States it is relatively dry except for a few little wet patches up in the mountains um up here in the Pacific Northwest Seattle um the Cascade regions it's very very wet meanwhile the eastern half of the United States all the way over here pretty wet year around they get a lot of rainfall here in the west we're pretty dry we actually talk about why that happens in this course so this is just an overarching just taste of what we'll be talking about this course okay last thing I want to talk about for this module um every course that I teach has different policies in terms of how the grade is calculated what my office hours are and so on um and since I plan to use these videos for more than one term for more than one section of Met 10 because I'm not going to reinvent the wheel every every single time um I'm going to tell you to refer to your syllabus refer to any new videos that I post um and I will provide that information at the beginning of each ter but one thing I do want to talk about really quickly because this applies to all my classes is the textbook so the textbook that I teach out of is essential of meteorology in invitation to the atmosphere this book was um originally written by C Donald erens um a professor of meteorology a fellow community college professor and a fellow San Jose State Alum um that being said I teach out of the book I I outline inform this class based on the teachings of the book um I think it actually does a really good job of doing the Material Justice um that being said um in here I have the seventh edition in my hand right here and I have sat down and flipped through this and I do assign readings but if I'm being brutally honest I cannot in good conscience make a student pay 150 bucks to buy this book for a gen ed class I just can't so instead of requiring it I am recommending it the reason why I'm still recommending it is because if you just rely on my lessons and my slides and stuff like that you're going to get a great set of notes for this class and a really good overarching this this is what this class is about like you're not going to be left hanging but but you are not going to get the full taste that you need of meteorology you're just not um I cannot in the videos that I will be I will be talking about do this whole subject Justice the textbook is an amazing supplement to it however I know that many people are trying to save money I know that many people are trying to um go textbook lists um and I am not going to fight that and I again cannot in good conscience make a student spend the ridiculous amount of money that people have to spend on these things as a result this book is recommended so if you do not buy the book you will not be at a disadvantage you can get by from my notes from the lesson video everything you need to study you can get by with it but if you actually planning on becoming a meteorology major or studying something that is relative to meteorology I would strongly recommend in borderline require buy the book um don't buy the newest version which is the eighth version actually I think there's a ninth version now they come up with a new version like every other year um don't waste your money on that um go buy like a seventh edition um a sixth edition don't get much older don't get much older than the sixth edition though then you're um a lot of stuff gets updated um but I yeah don't you don't have to buy the book but if you are interested in really delving deeper into this stuff and you know my notes don't do it Justice I would recommend buying the book um so it is a recommended book but it is not required all right you can still easily get an A in this class without the book um so as long as you're following along with the notes the lesson videos the review sheets and so on you're you're going to be in good shape all right and then the last thing I want to talk about really quickly um this class I think um I know I know a lot of people sign up for this class if I could be candid for a moment a lot of people sign up for this class because they were told it's easy um I know that I'm not I I'm I'm not going to like be oblivious to that um and I would like to take pride in the fact that yeah you know I try to make this class very very approachable um the last thing I want is for any of you to feel like you can't do this that would that would be heartbreaking to me um that being said just because it's an easy class doesn't mean that there's no work no effort no anything um there will be times in this class where you are frustrated there will be times in this class where you are stuck there will be times in this class where you are confused and that is natural that is fine don't hate yourself over that and don't hate me over that but know this I am genuinely here and eager to help you I sometimes may be hard to track down you may have to email me two three times and bug the hell out of me um depending on if I'm at a conference or if I'm teaching three classes and giving fre midterms in the same week um if I got a lot of committee meeting stuff going on I mean there's all kinds of like like we as professors we don't just teach classes and go home we are pulled in many different directions but don't interpret that as me not wanting to help I am more than happy to help um anytime you're stuck with something anytime you're frustrated with something anytime you're confused about something anytime you don't think you can do it please come talk to me I am here to help you and I want you to succeed I really really mean that all right that wraps up module zero um so next we're g to actually be talking about the atmosphere all right so I will see you for module one