The Open University short course 'Modelling the Climate' (S199) is now open for registration.

It will be possible to start the course 4 times a year, from September 2005. The course is designed to involve 100 hours of study, and is at introductory level (level 1).

For further details of the course and how to register go to the Open University.

At present, the course is only open to residents in European study areas. The course will be more widely available in 2006.

Other institutions wishing to use the course materials for their own teaching needs should contact The Open University Worldwide.

This page will be the where students doing the course will be able to download the model, check for any updates and find backups of all the course material.

If you have any queries about the course, having read the course website, please contact the Open University.

To download the model used for the Open University course, click here (students will also receive a copy of the model on a CD-ROM).

A sample data set, for those who cannot complete a run in time, may be downloaded here. You should put this whole folder (experiment_sample) in C:\Program Files\ Climate Prediction\archive on your computer. Note that this file is very large - 373Mbytes!

To download the Magpie online glossary, click here.

Useful Web links to supplement the course:

Some of the figures from Chapter 3 are available on the web as animations. You can see an animated version of the Earth's orbit here (currently off-line, we will update when the page reappears) and a one-year movie of the Earth's albedo here. An animation of precession of the equinoxes can be found here. If you want to know more about long term climate change related to astronomical variations go to the BBC website.

For additional information on humidity go to the BBC website.

The following BBC pages will tell you more about air pressure and its measurement, should you be interested in learning more about it: air pressure, high pressure and low pressure.

To find out more about jet streams you might like to go here.

To find out how to recognise different clouds types in more detail go to the following BBC pages: clouds, cloud types, more on clouds , fog and more on fog.