Course Syllabus
ATM S 509 / OCEAN 512
Professor Dale Durran
502 ATG Building
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Our goal: To gain a thorough understanding of the fundamental processes governing oceanic and dry atmospheric motions. The focus will be on the response of these fluids to gravity and to apparent forces arising from the rotation of the earth.
Textbook: Adrian Gill, Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics. Section numbers in the syllabus refer to Gill's book. Two other useful references are Geoff Vallis Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics (Second edition) and Joe Pedlosky's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics.
Meeting Time: MWF 10:30-11:20, ATG 610.
No class Jan 29th, 31st and Feb 2nd.
Course Notes: Hand written notes from the lecture, interspersed with figures, will be posted as pdfs after each lecture. PDFs of the lecture notes are here
Contact Info/Office hours: M 1:00-2:00 PM in ATG 502, W 1:00-2:00 PM in ATG 406 or by appointment.
Grading: 80% homework, 20% final. One homework will require you to work independently. You are welcome to work with your classmates on the others, but you must write up your actual submission on your own and be sure you understand your solutions.
Final Exam: Monday, March 11, 8:30-10:20 AM
Course Outline
Review of Wave Kinematics
- Phase speed and group velocity. Vallis pp. 215-222
Small-amplitude motion in a nonrotating density-stratified fluid under a gravitational restoring force. (Gill, Chapter 6)
- Background: shallow-water waves derived via the quasi-hydrostatic approximation (5.6)
- American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology
- 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
- Fluid parcel orbits in a deep-water surface wave
- Fluid parcel orbits as the water depth shallows
- Two superimposed homogeneous fluids with a single interface; internal and external waves. (6.1)–(6.3)
- External and internal waves in a two-layer fluid.
- Internal waves approaching Palawan
- Wave groups in the Sulu Sea moving at 2.4 m/s (from Apel et al., 1985: The Sulu Sea Internal Soliton Experiment, JPO)
- Soliton generation
(Saint Lawrence Estuary?)
- Wave trains over Lake Superior
- Internal gravity waves in a continuously stratified, incompressible fluid. (6.4)–(6.7)
- Energetics of internal gravity waves (6.7)
- Normal modes: the connection between shallow water theory and hydrostatic motion in a continuously stratified fluid. (6.11)
- Coriolis and Centrifugal forces (4.5.1); better in Pedlosky pp. 14-21.
- Bulletin of the AMS article on the Inertial Oscillation
- Sidereal day
- Your Friend the Coriolis Force
- Constant angular momentum (Inertial) oscillations.
- Geostrophic adjustment, geostrophic balance. (7.1)- (7.6)
- Free-surface animation (initial step, no variations perpendicular to screen)
- u-velocity animation (along x-axis in plane of screen)
- v-velocity animation (along y-axis perpendicular to the screen)
- Longer in time simulation of v-velocity
- Effect of rotation on surface gravity waves. (8.1)-(8.3)
- Historic measurements in the Baltic
- Geostrophic adjustment: almost for real (Plougonven and Snyder, 2007, JAS)
- Circulation, vorticity and potential vorticity. (7.9)-(7.11)
- World record spin 2007: 308 RPM
- Potential vorticity on the 310 K isentropic surface (current weather animation by Greg Hakim)
- Application to Rossby waves generated by topography
- Thermal wind (7.7)
- 250 HPa (jet stream level) isotachs (color fill in knots) and height contours
- Solar flux as a function of latitude
- Contrast February and August 500-hPa geostrophic winds
- Kelvin wave (10.4)
- Kelvin wave animation
- Equatorial and coastal Kelvin waves
- Observed equatorial Kelvin wave - animation
- Ekman layers and spin down (9.2), (9.4), (9.6), (9.12)
- Convective vs Diffusive Heat Transport (YouTube)
Small-amplitude motion in a rotating fluid with variations in the basic state potential vorticity
- On a physical mechanism for Rossby Wave Propagation
- Barotropic Rossby waves (12.1)-(12.3)