Atmospheric Science Club

Atmospheric Science Club

Who Are We?

ASC is a group for Atmospheric Science students and general weather enthusiasts at the University of Alberta. We offer members an opportunity to meet Wx geeks (the true geeky way to abbreviate weather); meet prospective supervisors, employers, and collaborators; learn about scholarships and careers; and share their enthusiasm for atmospheric science through volunteer activities.

What is Atmospheric Science?

Atmospheric science is the study of planetary atmospheres, primarily the Earth's. Atmospheric science consists of 3 main branches:

• Meteorology is what most people think of, when they think of atmospheric science. Meteorology is basically the study of weather, or the state of the atmosphere. Weather is typically defined by dynamic properties such as horizontal motion (wind), vertical motion (downdrafts and updrafts), and rotational motion (low- and high-pressure systems, hurricanes, tornadoes); thermodynamic properties, such as temperature and humidity; and hydrological properties, such as cloud cover and precipitation. However, there are many other properties of our atmosphere that meteorologists study: chemistry and composition, electricity, interactions with the land surface, interactions with the ocean surface, interactions with outer space, and many more.
• Climatology is similar to meteorology, just as climate is similar to weather. Basically, climate consists of long-term trends in weather, and climatology is the study of these long-term trends. Like meteorologists, climatologists study the atmosphere vis-à-vis dynamic properties (long-term trends in the jet stream, tornado frequency, land and sea breezes), thermodynamic properties (trends in temperature, humidity, air-sea temperature difference, air-land temperature difference), hydrological properties (trends in thunderstorm and tornado occurrence, flood frequencies, sea-level changes, glacial changes), chemical properties (greenhouse gases, volatile organic compounds, radioactive chemicals, ozone-depleting substances), and many more. The line between meteorology and climatology is often fuzzy. Generally, meteorology tends to be more focused on short-term (within 2 weeks) weather-forecasting, whereas climatology tends to focus on longer periods and include more interactions with other Earth systems.
• Aeronomy is the study of the upper atmosphere, where processes such as dissociation and ionization predominate over familiar processes in the lower atmosphere such as wind and precipitation. Aeronomists generally study processes such as the atmospheric tides and upper-atmosphere lightning discharges from thunderstorms. This is a less-traveled, but still fascinating, branch of atmospheric sciences.

Where Do We End Up?

Atmospheric Science graduates from the University of Alberta have gone on to become public- and private-sector weather forecasters, marine-weather forecasters, air-quality forecasters, researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, instrument technicians, professors, and of course, storm chasers!

If you have any questions about ASC, please e-mail us at atmossci@ualberta.ca and/or join our Discord group. Get to know us!

ASC President,

Pallawi Paudel