ATOC 3600: Principles of Climate

Schematic depiction of the global energy cycle.

Overview

The Earth’s climate has been changing since its formation 4.6 billion years ago. Climate varies on all time scales and is known to experience periods of glaciation as well as warmer periods. Since the industrial revolution, humans have burned large amounts of fossil fuels changing the composition of the atmosphere, cleared large forested regions for agriculture and caused climate to change.

This class describes the basic components of the climate system: the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and lithosphere. We investigate the basic physical processes that determine climate and link the components of the climate system. The class covers the energy budget, hydrological cycle and its role in climate, atmospheric and oceanic circulation, climate stability, global change, projecting climate and its application to human dimensions. This class is an upper level science course and will focus on the quantitative aspects of climate science.

Instructor: David Noone<dcn@colorado.edu>

When: Fall 2007; Tuesday Thursday 12:30-1:45pm

Where: Duane, RM G131

Prerequisites: One semester of calculus, and either ATOC 1050 and 1060, or ATOC 3300/GEOG 3301, or GEOG 1001.

Grading: Assignments (3) (40%), in-class problems (25%), midterm (10%), final exam (25%)

Office hours: Tuesdays after class. Please use sign-up sheet. Ekeley Siences (CIRES), office S234.

Exam: Tuesday, December 18th, 10:30am – 1:00pm

Download a PDF copy of Syllabus and course outline

Textbook

Oliver and Hidore, Climatology: An Atmospheric Science, 2^nd ed, Prentice Hall, 2002

Other books/resources

D. Hartmann, Global Physical Climatology, Elsevier Academic Press,1994 (more advanced)

Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) from NCAR Climate Analysis Section

Lecture notes

Reading assignments are from Oliver and Hidore. In this column I have marked also when we have had in class problems. These can be downloaded for review from the links below. Future lecture topic are approximate and subject to (minor) change. The reading schedule will be quite close.

Week	#	Date	Topic/Notes	Reading	Other
I	01	28 Aug	Overview	Ch 1, 1-6
	02	30 Aug	State variables and flux	Ch 1, 7-12
II	03	04 Sep	Hydrostatic equation	Ch 1, 13-19, EX1	Stratosphere song.
	04	06 Sep	Energy balance	Ch 2, 20-26	heat transport demo
III	05	11 Sep	Radiation laws	Ch 2, 27-35
	06	13 Sep	Radiative equilibrium	Ch 3, 36-44, EX2	radiative equilibrium demo
IV	07	18 Sep	Greenhouse effect	Ch 3, 45-57
	08	20 Sep	Latent heat and phase change	Ch 4,58-60, EX3	(Also read Box 3.1 and 4.1). Latent heat, and hot pads demo
V	09	25 Sep	Water cycle - precipitation and saturation	Ch 4, 61-62
	10	27 Sep	Cloud processes, albedo and aerosols	Ch 4, 63-74	cloud chamber demo
VI	11	02 Oct	Dry and moist stability	Ch 4, 75-83
	12	04 Oct	Mid-term 2	Ch 1-4
VII	13	09 Oct	Moist stability and pressure	Ch 5, 86-88, 104-109
	14	11 Oct	Forces and Coriolis	Ch 5, 89-91, EX4	Coriolis demo
VIII	15	16 Oct	Geostrophic flow	Ch 5, 92-95	geostrophic
	16	18 Oct	Divergence and vertical motion	Ch 6, EX5	purple beaker
IX	17	23 Oct	Zonal mean circulation	Ch 8, 140-151,
	18	25 Oct	Baroclinic storms and waves	Ch 6, 110-113, Box 5.2, EX6	annulus
X	19	30 Oct	Vorticity and Rossby waves	Ch 7, EX7
	20	01 Nov	Wind driven ocean circulation	Ch 7	intensification
XI	21	06 Nov	Upwelling and ENSO	Ch 7
	22	08 Nov	Thermohaline circulation	Ch 9	salt fingers
XII	23	13 Nov	Variability - glacial	Ch 10
	24	15 Nov	Ice core reconstreuction	Ch 11, EX 8
XIII		20 Nov	Fall break - no class
		22 Nov	Fall break - no class
XIV	25	27 Nov	Ice sheets and sea level	Ch 12, EX 9
	26	29 Nov	No lecture - project work
XV	27	04 Dec	The carbon cycle	Ch 12, EX 10	Guest lecturer: Nik Buenning
	28	06 Dec	Climate change	Ch 12
XVI	29	11 Dec	Practice exam
	30	13 Dec	Review		Project 3 due

		18 Dec	Exam

Final Exam

Tuesday, December 18th, 10:30am – 1:00pm, Duane G131 (i.e., normal classroom)

To prepare, go over notes, overhead slides, text book reading assignments, problems sets and assignments. Also, you should consider the broad questions given in this study guide, and, of course, revisit the syllabus. Also, remember the practice exam.

Assignments

Measurements assignment - Due 5pm Thursday 20 September

Download the assignment sheet, including the measurement worksheet and group assessment pages.

Download a sample word document with the outline for your report.

Modeling Assignment- Due 5pm Thursday 8 November

Download the assignment sheet, including the description of the model and the model tutorial.

Go to the model web interface.

Global analysis - Due 5pm Thursday 13 December

Download the assignment sheet, including the group assessment pages.

Go to NCEP Reanalysis Atlas

Update notice: please use zonal wind in place of wind speed, which only exists for the mean. You may also use precipitation as a measure of "wetness" rather than relative humidity. Also, you can estimate the interannual variability as total standard deviation minus interannual variability.

In class exercises

Each class problem is marked out of 10, worst 2 are not counted toward your final grade. The material from these exercises is fair game for the exam.

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ATOC 3600 (GEOG 3601/ENVS 3600)

Principles of Climate