Past Courses

AOS 19 Environmental Transformation of the Arctic

Fiat Lux Freshman seminar. Though signs of global climate change can be seen all over the earth, the Arctic and surrounding land areas are currently experiencing particularly dramatic change, including loss of sea ice and snow cover, disappearance of permafrost, and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.   This course will examine the reasons the Arctic is warming so much more rapidly than the rest of the world and the consequences of Arctic change for the northern regions and the global environment.  From the looming extinction of polar bears to the redrawing of international political boundaries as land and ice shift, the Arctic is also a prime example of the adaptation of ecosystems and humans to rapid environmental change.  Since climate change comparable to what is already occurring in the Arctic is anticipated for the rest of the planet in the coming century, our focus on the Arctic will give a glimpse into the rest of the earth’s future.
syllabus

AOS 201A Geophysical Fluid Dynamics I

Lecture and discussion, four units. Winter quarter 2010. Lecture, three hours. Fundamental equations of motion. Atmospheric and oceanic approximations. Rotating reference frame. Density stratification. Geostrophic adjustment and balance. Potential vorticity conservation. Vortex dynamics. Acoustic, gravity, inertial, Rossby, and Kelvin waves. Barotropic and baroclinic instability. Ekman boundary layers. Oceanic wind gyres: Sverdrup balance and western boundary currents. Letter grading.
syllabus

AOS 217 Mesoclimates

Lecture and discussion, 4 units. Global distribution of climate regimes with spatial scales smaller than 100 km.  Mechanisms maintaining mesoclimates against the much larger-scale atmospheric general circulation and insolation gradients.  Mesoclimate-ecosystem interaction. Letter grading.
syllabus

AOS 244 Radiation and Climate

Lecture and discussion, 4 units. AOS 244 was offered as a special research seminar on the role of the diurnal cycle in determining the mean state of the climate system. Letter grading.
reading list

AOS 281 Special Topics in Dynamic Meteorology: Climate Sensitivity

Lecture, 3 units. How much will the earth warm for a given increase in greenhouse gases? What is the climate's sensitivity to other kinds of external forcings, such as volcanic eruptions or changes in the distribution of sunshine due to changes of the earth's orbit? These timely issues are the topic of this course. We will examine the main mechanisms thought to control climate sensitivity and the geographical distribution of climate response, including temperature, lapse rate, water vapor, cloud, and ice/snow albedo feedbacks. In addition, we will examine processes modulating the transient response of the climate to an external forcing, such as the ocean circulation. Finally, we will study how the hydrologic cycle, an element of climate of comparable importance to temperature, might change in response to an external forcing. Letter grading.