SO 441 - Synoptic Meteorology

The material for this course is an ongoing work in progress.  I welcome all comments and correction pertaining to the content below.     Please email comments and corrections to:

Course syllabus

Course policy

Round 1 Weather discussion schedule: 1st Period (Section 1001)   3rd Period (Section 3001)
  - Grading rubric - Spring 2013

Week 13 reading: Tornadoes and supercell thunderstorms by Doswell and Burgess
Forecast exercise (USNA football cities)

Group presentation: guidelines
    - Presentation tips


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Important weather sites
  - http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/     Surface, upper-air, radar, model data
  - http://www.spc.noaa.gov/     Storm Prediction Center
  - http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/     National Hurricane Center
  - http://www.weather.gov/     NWS
  - http://www.ral.ucar.edu/hurricanes/realtime/current/     UCAR global TC prediction
  - http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/annapolis/Pages/heatflags.aspx     Current heat flag at hospital point
  - http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/     TC satellite images
  - http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov     NOAA Ocean Prediction Oenter
  - http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/     NOAA Weather Prediction Center
  - http://weather.unisys.com    Unisys
  - http://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrrconus/     Short-range model prediction (HRRR)
  - http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/NCOMAGWEB/appcontroller     Weather prediction models
  - http://vortex.plymouth.edu/    Plymouth State weather site
  - Tropical Cyclone Automated Tracking - Canadian Meteorological Service
  - SPC Forecast Tools (Upper-air charts, etc)
  - RAMSDIS satellite (water vapor, etc.): North & South America
  - US Geographical Boundaries (from HPC)
  - US Geographical Features (from HPC)
  - NOAA Tide Station Annapolis
  - NWS Model Output Statistics
  - Iowa State University MOS Interface
  - CoCoRaHS maps -- good for snow totals
  - SPC Plumes -- short-range ensemble predictions
  - MeteoChile Chilean meteorological service
  - Servicio Meteorológico de la Armada de Chile Meteorological Service of the Chilean Navy

Lecture Notes & Presentations

Week 1: Reading assignment: Numerical Weather Prediction and questions
              Lab assignment

27 Aug 2013: Course overview

Lesson 1 - Weather Forecasting (Week 1)

Lesson 2 - Manual Analysis (Week 2)

Lesson 3 - Numerical weather prediction (Weeks 3 and 4)

Lesson 4 - Extratropical Cyclones (Week 5)

Lesson 5 - Vorticity (Weeks 7 & 8)

Lesson 6 - Potential Vorticity (Week 9)

Lesson 7 - Quasi-geostrophic theory (Weeks 9-11)
  - QG omega and height-tendency equation derivations

Lesson 8 - Fronts (Week 13)

Lesson 9 - Thunderstorms (Weeks 13-14)
  - Chapter reading: Doswell (1993)

Lesson 10 - Tornado case study (Weeks 15)
  - Chapter reading: Forbes and Bluestein (2001)

Labs

Lab 1 - Surface analysis
  - Lab 1a (lab at start of the course)

Lab 2 - Upper-air and NWP analysis
  - GFS output

Lab 3 - Vorticity and Vorticity Advection

Lab 4 / Assignment 4 - Quasi-geostrophic Theory (concurrent with Assignment 4)

Assignments

Assignment 1
  - Assignment 1b (reading at start of the course)

Assignment 2 (including figure for Question 3)

Assignment 3

Lab 4 / Assignment 4 Quasi-geostrophic Theory (concurrent with Lab 4; same file as above)