Title

Meteorological Hazards

Course code

GEOLGH2

Course coordinator

Dr. Ian Mason

Other contributors

Prof. Mark Saunders, Dr. Adam Lea and guest tutors

Aims

Provide an introduction to meteorological hazards, their impacts and consequences, and the processes and mechanisms that underpin them

Outcomes

Understanding the processes and mechanisms that cause and contribute towards meteorological hazards in the context of potential impacts on people, infrastructure and wealth concentrations

Content

• Introduction to atmospheric and hydrological processes
• Methods of observing extreme weather, and sources of extreme weather data
• Climate variability and climate oscillations
• Large scale windstorms: hurricanes, typhoons, winter extra-tropical cyclones
• Floods and other hydrological hazards: river floods, coastal floods, drought, wildfires
• Temperature and temperature extremes: heatwaves, cold waves, frost and ice storms
• Thunderstorm-related hazards: tornadoes, hail, lightning
• Space weather: solar effects on the Earth environment and their socio-economic impacts
• Modelling windstorm and flood losses
• Windstorm and flood damage in the UK
• Flood monitoring and mitigation
• Flood and windstorm engineering
• Insurance aspects of flooding and climate change
• Weather derivatives

Term(s)

2

Credit

20

Exam

1 x 2 Hour seen paper (80 percent)

Coursework

1 long essay/short report (20 percent)

Contact time (total)

200

Taught

56

Study

144

Prerequisites

None