Climate Modeling Syllabus 

The Earth's Climate System

• Geography: The continents and oceans; basic concepts in energy exchange over land and water
• Components of the Earth climate system: Atmosphere
• monsoons and tropical convection
• the midlatitude storm belt
• Hadley, Walker and Feral Cells
• the role of tropical storms and other intense mesoscale weather phenomena
• Components of the Earth climate system: Oceans
• the upper ocean structure (T and S)
• ocean currents and heat transport
• sea ice
• ocean sensivity to the atmosphere
• Energetics of the Climate System
• mean budgets
• seasonal cycles
• interannual variability
• variability on climate timescales

Model Structure and Differencing

• Simple Concepts in Numerical Modeling
• Galerkin Techniques
• Legendre Polynomials
• Associated Legendre Polynomials
• Spectral Transform Technique
• Stability Analysis

 Lecture notes for this component of the course are available for copying.

Model Parameterizations

 

Exploration and Validation of Current Coupled Climate Models

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Last Updated: 13 January 2001.