Using the Climate App to learn about Planetary Habitability and Climate Change

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Climate App, an interactive web tool that educates users on planetary climate processes and habitability, suitable for various educational levels and covering fundamental to advanced concepts.

Contribution

It presents a user-friendly, bilingual online application that demonstrates simple climate models for educational purposes, including new features for deeper atmospheric radiative transfer analysis.

Findings

The App effectively explains greenhouse effects and planetary albedo.

It supports teaching from high school to college levels.

Beta testing of pedagogical activities is underway.

Abstract

Simple climate models have been around for more than a century but have recently come back into fashion: they are useful for explaining global warming and the habitability of extrasolar planets. The Climate App (https://www.climateapp.ca) is an interactive web-based application that describes the radiative transfer governing planetary climate. The App is currently available in French and English and is suitable for teaching high-school through college students, or public outreach. The beginner version can be used to explore the greenhouse effect and planetary albedo, sufficient for explaining anthropogenic climate change, the Faint Young Sun Paradox, the habitability of TRAPPIST planets and other simple scenarios. There is also an advanced option with more atmospheric layers and incorporating the absorption and scattering of shortwave radiation for students and educators wishing a deeper dive into atmospheric radiative transfer. A number of pedagogical activities are being beta tested and rolled out.