Class time: 8.15-10.00 Wednesdays and 10.15-12.00 Fridays (starting October 29) for Period II (weeks 44-50 in 2008)
Class location: Dynamicum, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Aurinko Collaboratory, Fourth Floor, 4C14c
Credit: 5 op
Prerequisites: Synoptic Meteorology and Numerical Weather Prediction
Or, permission of the instructor
The course is taught in English and is designed for M.S. and Ph.D. students.
Students will be expected to read up to 60 pages of reading each week, lead and participate in group discussions, and write summaries of the discussions. Weather map discussions and laboratory exercises will be held in the Aurinko Collaboratory at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, in conjunction with the reading topics. A class project will be required of all students.
Course goal and format: The goal of this course is to develop critical thinking skills within the context of applying and understanding output from numerical weather prediction models. These skills will benefit forecasters, researchers, and users of models.
The format of the course will be part lecture, part discussion, part laboratory, and part student presentations.
Course content: The content will be tailored quite strongly to the interests of the students in the course. Therefore, a strict syllabus of course content is not possible at this time.
Some of the topics that might be covered:
Diagnosis of Model Output
High-Resolution Numerical Modeling
Ensemble Modeling
Predictability
Physical Parameterization Schemes
Model Output Statistics and Postprocessing
The Human Role in an Increasingly Automated Forecasting Environment
Course content will be largely controlled by the interests of the students.
October 29:
Introduction, diagnosis and ingredients-based thinking
October 31:
Common Misconceptions about NWP
November 5:
Resolution versus grid spacing, Determinism versus chaos, High Resolution or ensembles? (Roebber et al. 2004: Wea. Forecasting)
November 7:
More discussion of model resolution
November 12: TBA
November 14: TBA
November 19: TBA
November 21: TBA
November 26: TBA
November 28: Lecture: Convective Parameterization Schemes
Talk on the ECMWF Convective Scheme
December 3: TBA
December 5: The Human Role in an Increasingly Automated Forecasting Environment
December 10: Class presentations
December 12: Class presentations
David Schultz
david dot schultz at fmi.fi
Last update: 10 October 2008