MPO 663 - Convective and Mesoscale Meteorology

Brian Mapes, Spring 2008

I intend for students to come away with:

1. Some familiarity with (exposure to) the broad range of concepts and tools used to discuss, measure, quantify, understand and predict atmospheric convection and related severe weather and mesoscale phenomena.

2. Working understanding of several of these tools, cultivated via homework, including multi-scale data description and analysis; moist thermodynamics of parcel buoyancy and instability; gravity wave based reasoning about the non-white branch of moist convective circulations in the stratified troposphere; and geostrophic adjustment processes.

3. In-depth knowledge in a student-chosen topic of interest (can relate to your research, or just curiosity), based on a term project or literature review paper.

4. A sense of how convective and mesoscale phenomena fit into larger scales, gained via short current satellite imagery and weather discussions throughout the term.

This will be my second time, so the syllabus is not rigid, and emphasis may be adjusted to serve the interests of enrolled students. Alternating between theory / basics and observations / model results, formal instruction will attempt to cover:

1."Scale" - definitions, quantifications, and interpretations of mesoscale and multiscale atmospheric structure and phenomena in space and time

2.Observational tools –a data interpretation-oriented review of radar and satellite technologies, in situ measurement, sampling issues, etc.

3.Parcel dynamics- moist thermo, bulk microphysics, buoyancy. Cloud models.

4.Convection-driven mesoscale dynamics - constraints on rising white parcels by the embedding atmosphere (stratification initially, rotation inevitably).

5.Other mesoscale dynamics (geostrophy maintenance, cascades, etc.).

6.Observed phenomena: cumulus clouds, precipitation development, multicellular convection, supercells and tornadoes, mesoscale convective systems, squall lines, fronts, rainbands, lanscape breezes, gravity waves, etc.

7.Larger-scale role of convection (i.e. the dynamics of convecting layers / regions).