12.818: Introduction to Atmospheric Data and Synoptic Meteorology 

Instructor: Lodovica Illari (illari@mit.edu)

Course Syllabus

Course Calendar

Project 1: Mass and Wind: station data

Project 2: Mass and Wind: geostrophic/ageostrophic flow

Project 3: Sloping pressure surfaces: hydrostatic balance   

Project 4: Fronts and jets: fronts and thermal wind

Project 5: The jet stream: jet webpage

Project 6: Tropical vs extra-tropical cyclones

Project 7: Extra-tropical cyclones: quasi-geostrophy and the vorticity eq.

Project 8: Vertical velocity estimates: vorticity, kinematic and isentropic methods

Project 9: Potential vorticity diagnostics

Project 10: Low frequency variability: atmospheric blocking

Project 11: Low frequency variability: teleconnections

Project 12: Omega equation

Notes on GEMPAK (GEneral Meteorological PAcKage)

Tank Experiments

Lecture Notes:
12.003 Notes

Text Books:
Holton: An Introduction to Dynamical Meteorology (Academic Press)

Wallace and Hobbs: Atmospheric science - An Introductory Survey (Academic Press)

Peixioto and Oort: Physics of Climate (Springer)