Geophysical Fluid Dynamics

Catalog description

The fundamental dynamics of rotating stratified fluids. Topics include inertia-gravity waves, geostrophic and cyclogeostrophic balance, vorticity and potential vorticity dynamics, quasi-geostrophic motions, planetary and topographic Rossby waves, inertial, symmetric, barotropic, and baroclinic instability, Ekman layers, and the frictional spin-down of geostrophic flows. Prerequisites: CEE 262A or a graduate class in fluid mechanics. Recommended math background: vector calculus, ordinary differential equations, and partial differential equations.