Some great introductory courses shared by our members that you might find useful and fun π
The home of free learning from The Open University, there so many interesting courses - itβs a great place to start!
Some of the OpenLearn courses shared by our members include:
The University of Reading is the UKβs leading meteorology department and offers 4 short free on-demand courses open to anyone. No existing knowledge or experience of meteorology required:
Explore some of the physical processes driving UK weather systems and get hands on in the world of weather with practical activities and fieldwork. Try your hand at forecasting and have a go at interpreting weather maps and compare your results with our educator, Dr Sylvia Knightβs. Youβll also watch our educators carrying out simple but effective experiments including creating clouds, simulating hot air rising and demonstrating the Coriolis effect
Investigate the impact of climate change, the research being done to tackle it, and what you can do to take meaningful action
Data assimilation has potential applications in a wide variety of fields. This course aims to provide an introduction to the basic concepts of data assimilation without assuming a background in mathematical concepts or any specialist subject knowledge
Climate and weather projections hold the data that businesses need both to evaluate the risk climate change poses and to mitigate that risk. However, interpreting this data can be challenging. On this two-week course, youβll learn how to identify relevant and reliable climate data for your business and explore how that raw data can be converted into information that connects with the particular operational and financial decisions you face
In addition, there are 4 term-long scheduled online courses, with start dates in October, January and April. These are offered in
Introductory, Practical and Modelling courses in atmospheric science: some are online and some are in-person at various centres around the UK. Educational discount or NCAS Subsidised rates for fees might be possible.
Courses include: Introduction to Atmospheric Science; Introduction to Scientific Computing; Data Analysis Tools; Introduction to Atmospheric Radar; Practical Aerosol Science; Introduction to UK Chemistry Aerosol model; Introduction to Unified Model; MPAS tutorials; Atmospheric Measurement & Modelling Summer School; Climate Modelling Summer School
You can subscribe to the NCAS Training mailing list
Wide range of courses from hydrology to agriculture and environmental remote sensing to data science. Some courses have flexible online and on demand options and some are subsidised for students.
Data science courses include: Climate data analysis with python; Mastering Environmental Data with R: From Basics to Efficiency; Spatial analysis in QGIS and R - An introduction for environmental scientists; Environmental insights with machine learning: Theory and application
You can subscribe to the UKCEH Training newsletter
There is a preview of LearnWorlds, UKCEHβs online learning platform in this video: https://youtu.be/_ry09lUNXkE?si=pAXyQDMgNrwYRSaC
Project Pythia is a home for Python-centered learning resources that are open-source, community-owned, geoscience-focused, and high-quality.
As well as their in-house Foundation Book of tutorials, Cookbooks, Data Repository and Youtube webinar playlists, Project Pythia curate a gallery for the discovery of other online courses
Working in collaboration with Project Pythia is Climatematch Academy which has made available the materials for its 2 week course on the Computational Tools for Climate Science.
From the Harvard Center for the Environment, this is a course website giving a quantitative introduction to the science of climate change and its consequences, meant to assist students to process issues that often appear in the news and public debates.
There are slides, videos and coding exercises in Jupyter notebooks with module categories titled Basics, Atmosphere, Oceans, Cryosphere and Warming Consequences:
A brand new, fully online and flexible MSc programme with modules covering interests such as renewable energy, water and marine resources management.