ICOS has developed several Jupyter notebooks for educational purposes. Notebooks are interactive documents that contain code, equations, visualisations, and narrative text. The interactive nature and narrative approach of Jupyter notebooks contribute to making science topics more visual and easily understandable.
The notebooks are developed by the ICOS Carbon Portal in collaboration with researchers and pedagogues. They utilise data from standardised, high-quality and long time greenhouse gas measurements of ICOS and are free to use. In general, the notebooks are suitable for:
• General public
• High school students
• University students (BSc, MSc & PhD)
• Researchers/scientists
How to access the notebooks
Notebooks can accessed and ran online through the ICOS public Exploredata Jupyter Hub. The password is provided by attending one of our webinars or emailing at jupyter-info (at) icos-cp.eu.
It is also possible to view additional documentation and download ICOS notebooks together with their ancillary material from GitHub.
The ICOS Jupyter notebooks for education focus on different aspects of Python programming and environmental science, depending on the needs and the level of prior knowledge.
Read more about the different types of educational notebooks:
Introduction to environmental science & programming: notebooks for high school students & public
These notebooks provide an introduction to environmental science and the basic principles of Python programming using ICOS data. The aim is to increase awareness on issues related to climate change and show why programming is necessary for monitoring the environment. The notebooks include exercises in Python programming while providing insight on topics related to:
• carbon cycle (incl. carbon sinks & carbon sources)
• global warming
• drought
Complex climate-related environmental processes are explained with the help of a narrative text, informative figures, videos, and interactive plots. The notebooks also include interactive quizzes and consolidation exercises with real-world use case scenarios to ensure that a user fully comprehends the presented scientific and programming topics.
Explore ICOS data with advanced programming: notebooks for university students
Notebooks developed for university students include exercises on specific scientific topics and introduce methods of scientific programming with Python. The notebooks focus on the application of a certain set of methods and the critical assessment of the corresponding results.
The applied methods as well as their corresponding code syntax are explained in detail with the help of a narrative text and figures. Students may further examine the results of the implemented methods by critically assessing the content of interactive plots.
The notebooks also include direct links to external information sources for further reading.
Notebooks as PhD course exercise material
ICOS Carbon Portal in collaboration with teachers and researchers at Lund University, Dept. of Physical Geography & Ecosystem Science, has produced a set of Jupyter notebooks for a PhD course titled: “From CO2 in situ measurements to carbon balance maps”. The notebooks are used as exercise material during supervised sessions, to facilitate cooperation between groups working on processing ICOS measurements, model outputs, and satellite data.
The code for the interactive visualisations is often already been made available so that students would concentrate more on understanding the code used to apply a certain scientific method and on critically assessing the corresponding output.
The course material can be used freely in PhD and other courses. In this case, please include a proper citation: cite the developer(s) of the particular notebook (mentioned at the top part of each notebook) as well as "ICOS Carbon Portal & Lund University Dept. Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science".
Introduction to Python: notebooks for researchers/scientists and university students
The introductory notebooks are aimed for those who are new to programming or, on the contrary, are familiar with programming in another programming language and wish to quickly become familiar with the syntax of Python. The examples are custom tailored to reflect realistic ICOS use cases.