ATM S 547, Spring Quarter 2013

Boundary Layer Meteorology

Instructor: Professor Chris Bretherton
704 Atmospheric Sciences Bldg., 685-7414
breth@washington.edu (office hours 1:30-2:30 MW or by appointment)

Lectures: Tu Th 11:30-12:50; ATG 406

Prerequisites: 505 (fluids) or permission of instructor

Recommended Text: The Atmospheric Boundary Layer, by J. R. Garratt, 1992, Cambridge University Press, 316 pp. (available at University Bookstore)

Course Description:

Turbulence and turbulent fluxes, averaging. Convection and shear instability. Monin-Obukhov similarity theory, surface roughness. Wind profiles. Organized large eddies. Convective and stably stratified boundary layers. Measurement technologies. Large-eddy simulation. Boundary-layer parameterization. Energy fluxes at ocean and land surfaces (including soil and vegetation interactions), diurnal cycle. Cloud-topped boundary layers.

Grading

Lecture notes (pdf). Some lectures take more than one period to complete. I plan to update some lectures as we go along, so you might not want to print them out more than a day in advance. The overall structure will not change, however.

Class Schedule Notes

These lectures will be made up after students' schedule constraints are known.

Homeworks

Back to Spring Quarter