Academic Courses

Course Description: According to the Degree Requirements and the Graduate Plan of the Atmospheric Science Program at UAF, Atmospheric Dynamics is a core class that is mandatory for all Atmospheric Science graduate students. This course mainly comprises the fundamentals of the thermodynamics and dynamics of the troposphere. The integral and local balance equations for dry air, water substances, trace constituents, total mass (equation of continuity), momentum (Newton's 2nd axiom), energy (1st principle of thermodynamics), and entropy (2nd principle of thermodynamics) are presented and explained, where inertial frames and moving frames rotating with the earth are considered. This presentation includes different kinds of co-ordinate systems. Simplifications like the hydrostatic and geostrophic approximations are related to scaling considerations (scale analysis). Balanced curved flows, streamlines and trajectories are explained, too. Circulation and vorticity principles are discussed to analyse rotational fluid fields. This part includes, for instance, circulation theorems, vortex lines and tubes, absolute and relative vorticity as well as potential vorticity, and the balance equation of vorticity. Wave analysis is explained on the examples of gravity waves and Rossby-Haurwitz waves. Fundamentals of numerical weather predictions and large scale dynamics are discussed with emphasis on the central unifying role of the quasi-geostrophic theory. Principles of the physics of the atmospheric boundary layer are presented to point out the effects of turbulent motion.

Course Description: According to the Degree Requirements and the Graduate Plan of the Atmospheric Science Program at UAF, Atmospheric Radiation is a core class that is mandatory for all Atmospheric Science graduate students. This course mainly comprises the governing laws of blackbody radiation as well as absorption line formation, the radiative transfer equation applied to the earth's atmosphere, the sun as a source of radiation including orbital geometry, solar spectrum and solar constant, atmospheric composition and absorption of solar radiation by water vapor and trace constituents including photochemical processes, molecular (Rayleigh) and aerosol (Mie) scattering as well as radiative properties of clouds, absorption and emission of thermal radiation by water vapor and trace constituents, interrelation between radiation and climate, and an introduction to remote sensing based on the principles of radiative transfer including atmospheric spectroscopy and spectral channels for atmospheric and remote sensing from space.

Course Description: The course Physics of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer mainly comprises the physics of the atmospheric surface layer (also called the Prandtl-layer) and the spiral layer (also called the Ekman layer). The balance equations for macroscopic systems are derived and discussed. Averaging procedures of Reynolds, Hesselberg, and Swinbank are explained and applied to derive the balance equations for turbulent atmospheric systems. Various closure principles of turbulence are presented and their pros and cons are discussed. Measuring techniques and the results of earlier field experiments are evaluated. Spectra of atmospheric turbulence are described, and techniques for analyzing time series data (Fourier analysis and wavelet analysis) are explained and applied to typical data sets. Buckingham's pi-theorem serves to analyze various similarity hypotheses (Monin-Obukhov scaling, Prandtl-Obukhov-Priestley scaling, Kolmogorov-Obukhov-Heisenberg scaling). The effects of surface properties and the energy conversion at land and water surfaces (including snow and ice coverages) on the turbulent state of the atmospheric boundary layer are pointed out, where, in particular, the interaction between the atmosphere and the vegetation-soil system is described. This includes also the effects of heterogeneous surface properties and the thermal stratification as well as orographic effects and boundary layer clouds. The pros and cons of various modeling techniques to predict boundary layer flows are discussed, and examples of numerical simulations are presented.

Course Description: The course Turbulence comprises the fundamentals of turbulence and its transfer properties: (1) Nature and origin of turbulence; characteristic measures (2) statistical description of turbulence; homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, (3) governing equations of momentum, heat, and matter for turbulent systems, (4) the closure problem of turbulence, (5) dynamics and spectral dynamics of turbulence, (6) boundary-free and wall-bounded shear flows, (7) turbulent transport, and (8) atmospheric applications; theoretical and numerical solutions.