Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences

Provide a detailed description of the observed atmospheric and oceanic features of the tropical mean state and variability on intrasesonal-to-seasonal timescales. Students will be introduced to physical processes associated with convection, tropical waves, tropical cyclones, monsoons, MJO, air-sea interactions, and stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation. The course aims to stimulate future research focused on improving the current understanding of problems in the tropics.

1. Structure of the tropical atmosphere
   1.1  The observed climatology
        1.1.1  Pressure, wind, temperature
        1.1.2  Water vapor
        1.1.3  Cloud cover
        1.1.4  Relative humidity
        1.1.5  Precipitation
        1.1.6  Tropical field experiments: GATE, TOGA-CORE, TCSP, DYNAMO
   1.2  What controls the tropical circulation
        1.2.1  The Earth's heat-energy balance
        1.2.2  Land/Sea distribution
        1.2.3  Sea-surface temperature
        1.2.4  Small-scale turbulence
        1.2.5  Interaction with midlatitude flow
2. Structure of the tropical oceans
   2.1  Basic ocean structure
   2.2  Sea-surface temperature
   2.3  Ekman transport and upwelling/downwelling
   2.4  Land-sea breeze
3. Cloud physics
   3.1  Properties of water and water solutions
   3.2  Water equilibrium in the atmosphere
   3.3  Cloud and fog formation
   3.4  Cloud processing of aerosols
4. Tropical convection
   4.1  Dry convection
   4.2  Moist convection
   4.3  Numerical modeling of convective clouds
   4.4  Radiative-convective equilibrium
   4.5  Cumulus representation in numerical models
   4.6  Interaction of convection with large-scale flows
5. Dynamics of tropical waves in the atmosphere and ocean
   5.1  Equatorial waves, African easterly jet, African easterly waves
   5.2  Tropical instability waves
6. The global monsoon systems
   6.1  Asian monsoons
   6.2  African monsoons
   6.3  Australian monsoon
   6.4  North and South American monsoons
7. Intraseasonal variability of the Tropics
   7.1  Madden Julian Oscillation
   7.2  Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Oscillation
8. Tropical disturbances
   8.1  Tropical cyclones
   8.2  Ooyama's hurricane model
9. Stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation
   9.1  Mechanisms of the QBO
   9.2  Stratosphere-troposphere interaction