METO 617 Atmospheric and Oceanic
Climate(check out the flyer) (3) 
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Point Distribution Office hours Text book Description:
This course is one of the six required core courses for the graduate curriculum in the department of meteorology. The course provides practical job skills training for the environmental professional with homework assignments and the class project as well as providing the development and use of a mathematically based framework for the Earth’s climate system. In addition, guest lectures by experts in the field covering essential topics in earth system science and meteorology are typically provided. Finally, the instructor provides an emphasis on developing the advanced students’ talents for looking at observations, asking questions and deriving possible answers by modeling a method of enquiry, derivation of simple models from theory and “checking” of answers using things we “know” from theory and observation.
Some of the topics covered in detail include: Understanding what determines the Earth's climate and how it changes, the general circulation of the Atmosphere and oceans, how weather gives rise to climate, the historical perspective, observations, and conceptual model, general circulation as a heat engine driven by differential solar heating, Hadley and Walker circulations, wind-driven and thermohaline circulation of the oceans, intraseasonal variability in midlatitude storm tracks and jet streams, tropical storms and hurricanes, the Madden-Julian oscillation, observed seasonal cycles and monsoon circulations, interannual to interdecadal climate variability, the hydrological cycle, the carbon cycle. Detailed discussions of observed historical climate changes and possible future changes.
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