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| Instructor: John Chiang email: jchiang@atmos.berkeley.edu office phone: 642-3900 office: 547 McCone office hours: Tue 10-12 or by appt. |
Class Location: 575 McCone Class Time: Tu 9-12 Course control number: 36787 Units: 4 |
| Course may be repeated for credit. Two hours seminar and one hour consultation per week. Seminar focusing on topics of current interest to climate research (for example, the topic for Fall 2003 was on paleoclimate modeling, focusing in particular on the role of the tropics in past climate changes). The topic for Fall 2004 will be finalized this summer. |
| This semester's topic: Modern Climate Variability We will survey recent (and not so recent) journal literature on examples of modern climate variability on intraseasonal through decadal timescales, including the phenomenology, mechanisms, impacts, and potential changes under global warming. The examples covered are open to discussion depending on student interest. As a starting point, I propose the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Asian Monsoon variability be definitely covered, as they are the most important, and each governed by distinct mechanisms. Then, we can choose from a list depending on student intererst (and instructor inclination): 1. Intraseasonal oscillations (Madden-Julian Oscillation) 2. Seasonal cycle over tropical oceans (nontrivial!) 3. Tropical Atlantic Variability 4. West Africa Monsoon 5. Pacific Decadal Oscillation 6. Indian Ocean Dipole 7. Variability in the southern polar region |