The Arrhenius Model of Climate Change as a Classroom Experiment
Abstract
Climate Science has a long history, and telling the story of the discovery of climate change can be a powerful way of improving students' understanding of the key concepts underlying the greenhouse effect. The Arrhenius Project is an effort to rebuild Svante Arrhenius' 1896 energy balance model in Python, and will be used as part of an educational tool for grade 10-12 science classrooms. Students in these grades are prone to misconceptions about the mechanisms of the greenhouse effect, largely due to a lack of curriculum on these mechanisms. The goals of the Arrhenius Project are to clear up some of these misconceptions while improving student understanding of the theory behind climate modelling.
Arrhenius' model is interesting in that it is conceptually correct and remarkably accurate compared to predictions made by climate models today, but this accuracy is largely the result of luck: errors in his data for infrared absorption by CO2 and water vapour were compensated by his choice of a single layer model to simplify the computations. Hence his model illustrates several key issues with the use of computational models in science: a model is only as good as its data, and a model can give the right answer for the wrong reasons when multiple sources of error cancel out. Allowing students to experiment with the model and explore the impact of various errors gives them a stronger understanding of how climate scientists work, the importance of tracking down errors in computational models, and the many reasons why over-simplified experiments and models can give misleading results. Our reimplementation of the Arrhenius model can be configured to run exactly as Arrhenius ran it, or with various modern corrections of greater complexity. At their teacher's discretion, students will be able to investigate how factors such as CO2 concentrations, feedback loops, and a layered atmosphere contribute to warming. Additional pages on the website will explain these concepts in more depth and how they relate to the real atmosphere. These features will combat misconceptions about the way energy moves in the atmosphere, and will provide a solid foundation for proper understanding of the greenhouse effect. The project will undergo initial testing in a high school classroom environment during Fall 2018.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED31E1091H
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0810 Post-secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0830 Teacher training;
- EDUCATION