Prof Hall is definitely interested in what he teaches. This class is a catch all and covers a lot of introductory climate science topics across all sorts of domains. Hall likes to teach these very conceptual topics right off the slides, which can get a little boring and hard to pay attention to. His grading scheme is fine, but if you fumble one of the midterms you're a little screwed (there's five of them and they're each worth 13% of your grade). The tests are pretty tough, and some of the questions are super conceptual; we often would have to look at a graph and use some concept to explain what might be happening in the region the data came from. HOWEVER, they are open note, slides, practically everything, and they're take home multiple choice. Overall, this class is interesting, and is a really nice exposure to a lot of cool climate and AOS topics, but if you're not super engaged in the material or haven't just shotgunned a redbull, you may struggle to pay attention in lecture and not do so well on the harder exams.

Alex is a very kind professor and a nice guy to talk to as well. This class had an interesting structure that I am unfamiliar with. There was no homework or textbook. The only assignments we had were the midterms, which there are 5 of them total, one every two weeks. They are completed online on canvas and we are given five days to do them. These midterms are each worth 13% of the grade for a total of 65%. The exam questions asked are hard and are very conceptual. Participation is the other 35%. To clarify, this means there is no final either. Every other Wednesday there will be a class discussion in which you will be tasked with listening to an assigned podcast and submitting a question about it to explore during the discussion. The lectures themselves tended to be very boring and hard to pay attention to because the slides were very wordy and in black and white. Overall I would say if you are looking for a lighter class with no homework I would take it.