Welcome to the GEOS 435, Boundary Layer Meteorology, webpage for the Spring 2020 semester.



Above: The cover of the seminal ©1988 book that we used this semester and just a couple of the many important figures that students learned about.
We also learned from chapters 1 and 2 of Kaimal and Finnigan's Atmospheric Boundary Layer Flows ©1994.

Spring 2020 Lectures: Tues & Thurs from 12:30 - 1:45 PM in PHSC 130.

Office hours: Mondays from 1:30 - 4:30 PM or by appointment. (Please e-mail me to schedule something.)

Click here for a PDF of the Syllabus.

The following is a summary of what we covered at each meeting.

Tues., 21 Jan., Review syllabus, Lecture: typical engineering versus atmospheric boundary layers; ABL definition; wind, waves, turbulence.
Thurs., 23 Jan., Discussion of Taylor's hypothesis, static stability, potential temperature, virtual potential temperature.
Tues., 28 Jan., Synoptic scale subsidence, buoyant generation of turbulence, convective boundary layers (CBLs), entrainment, capping inversions.
Thurs., 30 Jan., Quiz #1, LES and lidar visualizations of CBLs, cellular structures, diurnal evolution of the ABL, stable boundary layer.
Tues., 4 Feb., Begin surface energy budgets. Surface microlayer. Sensible and latent fluxes. Discuss shortwave and longwave radiation.
Thurs., 6 Feb., Quiz #2. Lecture on use of scanning aerosol lidar in boundary layer meteorology.
Tues., 11 Feb., Summarize convective boundary layers (and free convection) and turn attention toward shear-driven boundary layers.
Thurs., 13 Feb., Quiz #3. Lecture on the atmospheric Ekman layer and how it differs from real atmospheric boundary layers.
Tues., 18 Feb., Guest: Dr. Chris Gaffney. (Student's were asked to explain everything they learned thus far to a physicist.)
Thurs., 20 Feb., Exam #1.
Tues., 25 Feb., Scaling: convective velocity scale and friction velocity scale.
Thurs., 27 Feb., Covariances and fluxes, dynamic and kinematic fluxes.
Tues., 3 Mar., Begin Chapter 8: autocorrelation functions and structure functions.
Thurs., 5 Mar., Special assignment #1 due. Begin Fourier transforms. Discussion of Fourier's law, diffusion equation, and Fourier's general solution.
Tues., 10 Mar., Calculating Fourier transforms by hand (on the board) and in Excel (worked through example 8.4.2 on P. 304 of Stull, 1988).
Thurs., 12 Mar., Results of the Fourier transform. (pages 305 -328)
Tues., 17 Mar., Spring Break
Thurs., 19 Mar., Spring Break
Tues., 24 Mar., Class cancelled due to COVID-19.
All lectures below this point were done on Zoom.
Thurs., 26 Mar., 1st Zoom meeting to discuss status of course and the rest of the semester.
Tues., 31 Mar., César Chávez Day. No classes.
Thurs., 2 Apr., Variance spectra of turbulence: energy containing range, Kolmogorov inertial subrange, dissipation range.
Tues., 7 Apr., w spectra in CBLs, then friction velocity and derivation of the log-wind profile in the neutral surface layer.
Thurs., 9 Apr., log-wind profile, roughness length, fluxes from means, static stability, begin dynamic stability: Ri and R_f.
Tues., 14 Apr., effects of non-neutral static stability on the mean wind-profile in the surface layer. Obukhov length.
Thurs., 16 Apr., non-dimensional forms of important parameters in the surface layer. Monin-Obukhov similarity theory.
Tues., 21 Apr., Review of material since 25 Feb.
Thurs., 23 Apr., Exam #2
Tues., 28 Apr., Review some questions from the exam, the begin discussion of cumulus clouds and the trade wind boundary layer.
Thurs., 30 May, cloud streets, cloud capped boundary layers (marine stratocumulus), open and closed mesoscale cellular convection.
Tues., 5 May, Review: no-slip boundary condition and shear-stress.
Thurs., 7 May, Review: energy budget of the surface.
May 11 - 15 Final Exam Week.

Dr. Mayor's page

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