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BENJAMIN
FELZER
Assistant Professor
Tel:
610-758-3536 | Fax: 610-758-3677
E-Mail: bsf208@lehigh.edu
Ph.D. (Geology), Brown University, 1995
M.S. (Geology), University of Colorado, 1990
B.A. with Honors (Physics major, Astronomy minor), Swarthmore College,
1987
Links: Full CV
portfolio (restricted access)
Courses
1. EES023 Weather and Climate: Past, Present, and Future
An introduction to the basic principles of meteorology, as they
pertain to past, present, and future climates. The course considers the
earth’s energy balance, cloud formation and precipitation, winds and
atmospheric circulation, regional climatologies, past warm periods and
ice ages in earth’s history, and the latest ideas about future climate
change and global warming. Students will maintain a weather notebook to
enable them to relate theory to observations from real weather data.
Three class hours per week. No prerequisites, but course will contain
simple mathematical applications and you will learn how to use MS Excel.
2. EES004 Science of Environmental Issues (team-taught course; I teach
section on Global Climate Change)
Analysis of current environmental issues from a scientific perspective.
The focus on the course will be weekly discussions based on assigned
readings. Pre- or co-requisite: 3-credit introductory-level (000-level)
course in EES (or the cross-listed EES 105/ASTR 105/PHY 105). Staff. (NS)
3. EES100 Earth System Science
Examination of the Earth as an integrated system. Study of interactions
and feedbacks between key components such as the atmosphere, biosphere,
geosphere, and hydrosphere to permit better understanding of the behavior
of the system as a whole. Response of the Earth system to human
perturbations such as land use and emissions are explored in the context
of predictions of future environmental conditions and their projected
impacts back on human systems. Lectures, class discussions, and lab.
Prerequisites: EES 22.
4. EES395 Intermediate
Meteorology
An intermediate course on the basic principles of
meteorology. The course considers
atmospheric structure and composition, earth’s energy balance and
radiation laws, cloud formation and precipitation, atmospheric motion and
circulation, including jet streams and planetary waves, atmospheric
stability, frontal systems and air masses, regional climatologies,
weather and climate modeling, and the latest ideas about future climate
change and global warming.
Students will keep track of daily atmospheric charts to enable them
to relate theory to observations from real weather data.
5. EES403 Earth System Modeling
This course will introduce the concepts behind computer modeling,
including stocks and fluxes, finite differencing, initial and boundary
conditions, feedbacks, calibration, validation, data visualization, monte
carlo, and sensitivity. We will apply these ideas to radiative energy
balance, atmosphere and ocean dynamics, hydrological cycling, terrestrial
carbon and nitrogen dynamics, and vegetation biogeography. Students will
learn both agent-based and systems dynamics modeling using NetLogo and
Stella, simple box modeling in Excel, and research-oriented models such
as the NCAR Community Climate System Model using C++, Fortran, and IDL.
The lectures will relate these modeling exercises to the fundamental
science to allow students to interpret how their results relate to larger
questions of global climate change and carbon feedbacks.
Research Statement
From 2001-2008 I was a research associate at the Ecosystems Center of
the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, where I worked with
the Terrestrial Ecosystems Model (TEM), a biogeochemical model of the
carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles. I am using this model to understand
the effects of the land surface, particularly vegetation, on the global
carbon cycle. For example, global warming is caused by emissions of
greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), but not all the CO2 we
emit into the atmosphere remains there because of absorption by the ocean
and land surface. I am also running the NCAR CESM global climate model
here at Lehigh on our 72 core Beowulf cluster, Lehigh’s Corona cluster,
and the NSF’s Yellowstone supercluster. Several important questions
include a) can we account for the land component of the 'carbon sink? b)
how do changes in vegetation cover affect atmospheric CO2 and the
resulting climate? c) how does the ability of vegetation to remove CO2
from the atmosphere change with a warmer climate? d) how will vegetation
migrate with shifting climates, and e) how does air pollution affect
vegetation productivity?
My major research foci are a) using the TEM model to determine the
effects of tropospheric ozone on vegetation production and carbon
storage, b) using TEM coupled to the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model
to determine the economic consequences of policy decisions regarding air
quality, c) developing more realistic carbon, water, and nitrogen
linkages to capture the effects of carbon and nitrogen feedbacks on the
hydrological cycle, d) exploring land use and land cover change
implications for carbon dynamics, especially with respect to future crop
growth for biofuels, and e) using global and regional climate models to
understand climate change in the past and to determine the impacts of future
climate change on ecosystems and the hydrological cycle. I also have been awarded funding from
NSF’s Macrosystems Biology program to explore the effects of climate
extremes (floods, droughts) on ecosystem functions and services.
During 2000/2001 I helped coordinate NOAA's Office of Global Programs
(OGP)'s GCIP/GAPP (GEWEX Continental-scale International Project/GEWEX
Americas Prediction Project, where GEWEX is the Global Energy and Water
Cycle Experiment) program. Previous to that, I served as the climate
scenarios coodinator for the U.S. National Assessment of the potential
consequences of climate variability and change (details),
following my postdoctoral research at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (details). Please see
my CV for list of publications and graduate research.
Last Updated 03/02/2013
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RESEARCH
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