There are a lot of excellent free resources now available, so I thought I’d start putting together a list. Hopefully, I will update these with more entries and commentary. Add what I forgot in the comments.
Books:
- “Practical Meteorology: An Algebra-based Survey of Atmospheric Science,” 2018, by Roland Stull. https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/books/Practical_Meteorology/
- “Demystifying Climate Models, A Users Guide to Earth System Models,” 2016, by Gettelman and Rood. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783662489574
Websites:
- UCAR’s Climate Data Guide (for understanding what’s available and how it works)
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu - UCAR’s MetEd (training resources, technical info)
https://www.meted.ucar.edu - NWS’s JetStream (some nice intro info)
https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/ - AMS Glossary of Meteorology (like it says on the tin)
http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Main_Page - Google Scholar (for finding relevant research)
https://scholar.google.com/ - Wikipedia (really: use cautiously, but there is some good info)
https://www.wikipedia.org - EarthWindMap weather visualization (useful and beautiful: try the Waterman Butterfly projection)
http://earth.nullschool.net - Khan Academy (for reviewing math and physics)
https://www.khanacademy.org
Software:
Time to learn python – free, open source, and lots of relevant packages. Anaconda is probably the best place to start for a package manager.
- UCAR’s MetPy package (lots of built-in meteorology calculations and tutorials, including how to access data online)
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/metpy/ - This blog entry by Damien Irving lists several useful python resources for weather and climate: https://drclimate.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/the-weatherclimate-python-stack/
Data:
This is a whole other topic, but just a quick note here that US weather forecast and reanalysis data is all available online, and much of it can be accessed interactively (but often slowly) with free packages like python or GrADS.
Social Media:
I’m too old to provide a good guide to this, but there is a lot of good weather and climate discussion and data visualization on Twitter.
- Marshall Shepherd’s list of people to follow:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2016/09/16/want-great-weather-information-on-twitter-76-suggestions-to-get-you-started/#22ab735b40cd . - And me, of course: @MathewABarlow
Online Apps:
Playing with simulations is a great way to gain physical intuition for complicated physical systems. Here are a few physics and math apps I’ve found useful online.
- Editable ripple tank simulation (try the temperature gradient examples)
http://www.falstad.com/ripple/
-Matt Barlow