Tropical Meteorology

All lecture notes and related documents are in Adobe PDF format. All lecture materials are in Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx) format. Most modern web broswers can natively render PDF files, while Office 365 or Google Slides can open .pptx files. Nevertheless, please let me know if you encounter any issues with accessing the lecture materials. These notes are provided for personal use only.

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Lecture Materials

• 22 January: Course Introduction (notes, slides)
• 27 January: Climatology of the Tropics (notes, slides)
• 29 January, 3 February: Hadley Cell (notes, slides)
• 5, 10 February: Equatorial Waves (notes, slides)
• 12 February: Walker Circulation (notes, slides)
• 17 February: El Nino-Southern Oscillation (notes, slides)
• 19 February: Madden-Julian Oscillation and Tropical Variability (notes, slides)
• 2, 4 March: Monsoons (notes, slides)
• 9, 23 March: Trade-Wind Inversion (notes, slides)
• 11 March: Mid-Term Exam
• 16, 18 March: No Class – Spring Break
• 25 March: Tropical Jets and Disturbances (notes, slides)
• 30 March, 1 April: Tropical Cyclone Climatology (notes, slides)
• 6, 8 April: Tropical Cyclone Formation (notes, slides)
• 13, 15 April: Tropical Cyclone Intensity Change (notes, slides)
• 20, 22 April: Tropical Cyclone Structure (notes, slides)
• 27, 29 April: Tropical Cyclone Motion (notes, slides)
• 4 May: Final Exam
• 6 May: Graduate Student Lectures and Course Evaluations

Additional Materials

These topics, while not formally covered in class, may nevertheless be of interest.

• Late January: Radiative-Convective Equilibrium and Self-Aggregation (notes, slides, video)
• Early May: Extratropical and Tropical Transition (notes, slides)

Resources

• National Hurricane Center Satellite Imagery
• UW/CIMSS Tropical Cyclones Webpage
• TAO/Triton Sea Temperatures
• MJO Temperature Composites
• Real-time MJO Monitoring and Forecasting
• Real-time MJO Monitoring and Forecasting
• Tropical Variability Monitoring
• Tropical Wave Monitoring
• Full-Disk Satellite Imagery
• The ENSO Spring Predictability Barrier
• IRI ENSO Forecasts
• Battisti et al. (2019, AMS Monographs): 100 Years of Progress in Understanding the Dynamics of Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Variability
• Emanuel (2019, AMS Monographs): 100 Years of Progress in Tropical Cyclone Research
• Wheeler and Kiladis (1999, J. Atmos. Sci.): Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves: Analysis of Clouds and Temperature in the Wavenumber–Frequency Domain
• Kiladis et al. (2009, Rev. Geophys.): Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves
• Zhang (2005, Rev. Geophys.): The Madden-Julian Oscillation