Department of Physics

10ΥΚ301 Atmospheric Dynamics

Course webpage: https://eclass.uoa.gr/courses/PHYS313

Course outline

Course content

• Basic concepts. Forces. Equations of motion, energy, mass conservation and simplified forms: Incompressible, anelastic, Boussinesq approximation. Equation of state.
• Reference systems, coordinate systems. The pressure and potential temperature as vertical coordinate. Pressure gradient.
• Characteristic scales of atmospheric motions. Scale analysis. Simplified forms of the basic equations. Thermal wind. Ekman spiral.
• Vorticity, conservation of vorticity (absolute and relative). Vorticity advection.
• Atmospheric stability (thermodynamic). Dynamic stability/instability. Small perturbations. Kelvin-Helmholtz, Raleigh-Taylor, Rossby waves.
• Taylor-Goldstein equation. Internal/external gravity waves, acoustic and Lamb waves. Wave trapping in the atmosphere.