Overview

The first third of the course, focusing on numerical model formulation and configuration, follows the first three chapters of Numerical Weather and Climate Prediction by T. Warner. The second third of the course, focusing on physical parameterizations, is drawn equally from the Warner text, Parameterization Schemes by D. Stensrud, and peer-reviewed articles describing individual parameterizations. The final third of the course, focusing on data assimilation, is drawn equally from the Warner text and the NCAR Data Assimilation Research Testbed’s laboratory exercises and accompanying slides.

This courses emphasizes dynamical weather prediction; i.e., using numerical methods to solve the dynamical equations governing atmospheric motions. Artificial-intelligence–based methods for weather prediction have recently begun to demonstrate skill competitive with that of the best dynamically based numerical weather prediction models, however, and continue to rapidly develop. Please refer to published preprints describing individual artificial-intelligence models for further details on these models.

Lecture Notes

All course materials are in Adobe PDF format. A free reader for PDF files is available from Adobe’s website, and recent versions of most major web browsers can natively render PDF files in the browser.

Class Resources

Additional resources can be found at the outset of many of the lecture notes provided above, particularly those related to physical parameterizations.

General Reading