Graduate; Spring
(Next offerred: Spring '01)
Prereq.: 12.803 or 12.810 or permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Observed characteristics of the stratosphere and mesosphere.
Climatological heat budget. Wave transport theory. Tides. Gravity
waves. Gravity wave breaking. Traveling planetary waves. Quasi-stationary
ultralong waves; propagation in winter, wave breaking. Impact on the
mean circulation. Potential vorticity diagnostics; dynamics of the
disturbed polar vortex. "Warmings." Equatorial waves in the
stratosphere. Theory of the quasi-biennial oscillation. Transport of
trace constituents.
R. A. Plumb
09 Feb 2000