Lectures 8:30 - 10:00, Monday and Wednesday , Room 219, Guyot Hall

Review of circulation, vorticity, potential vorticity

2D non-divergent flow on the sphere

• Vorticity mixing, zonal mean acceleration, pseudomomentum, and the Earth's angular momentum balance
• Rossby waves
  • meridional propagation, WKB
  • pseudo-momentum, pseudo-energy, orthogonality of normal modes
  • instability, over-reflection
  • critical layers
  • ray tracing -- relation to observed teleconnection patterns
  • edge waves, pseudo_energy conservation, and storm tracks

Shallow water equations

• quasi-geostrophy
• orographic forcing, mountain torque, and the non-acceleration theorem

The quasi-geostrophic two-layer model

• Intro to baroclinic instability, Charney-Stern, pseudomomentum
• "PV thinking"
• "Transformed Eulerian" momentum budget
• qualitative picture of the mainenance of the global circulation

The Hadley cell and the subtropical jet

• linear and nonlinear axisymmetric models
• the gross moist stability
• the intertropical convergence zone
• atmospheric vs oceanic energy transport
• Rossby wave- Hadley cell interaction

quasi-geostrophic wave-mean flow interaction theory

• form drag and the Elliasen-Palm flux
• the surface branch of the overturning mass-circulation
• potential vorticity mixing and the general circulation

maintenance of tropospheric static stability and the tropopause

• radiative and dynamical constraints
• Tropics
• Midlatitudes

Vertically propagating planetary waves and stationary eddies

• beta-plane propagation and trapping
• the external mode
• orographic vs. thermal forcing in midlatitudes
• the extratropical response to El Nino

Linear and finite amplitude baroclinic instability

• 2-layer, Eady, Charney
• PV thinking
• Baroclinic adjustment, amplitude bounds
• the "barotropic governor"
• the homogeneous limit
• Geostrophic turbulence and scale selection
• jet creation

Gravity waves and the QBO (if time permits)

• gravity-wave mean flow interaction
• Plumb's non-rotating QBO equatorial waves