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2. Course code

ATM315

Aikaisemmat leikkaavat opintojaksot 53623 Numeerinen meteorologia I, 5 op.

3. Course status: compulsory/optional

-Which degree programme is responsible for the course?
Master's Programme in Atmospheric Sciences

-Which module does the course belong to?
ATM300 Advanced Studies in Atmospheric Sciences
compulsory for

• Study Track in Meteorology

optional for

• Study Track in Aerosol Physics

TCM300 Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Computational Methods

-Is the course available to students from other degree programmes?
Yes

4. Course level (first-, second-, third-cycle/EQF levels 6, 7 and 8)

Master’s level, degree programmes in medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine = secondcycle
degree/EQF level 7
Doctoral level = third-cycle (doctoral) degree/EQF level 8

-Does the course belong to basic, intermediate or advanced studies (cf. Government Decree
on University Degrees)?
Advanced studies

5. Recommended time/stage of studies for completion

-The recommended time for completion may be, e.g., after certain relevant courses have
been completed.

6. Term/teaching period when the course will be offered

The course will be lectured every year in the I period.

7. Scope of the course in credits

5 cr

8. Teacher coordinating the course

Prof. Heikki Järvinen

9. Course learning outcomes

At end of the course, students should know the principles of the numerical methods used in weather and climate models, and can at practical level write a computer program to numerically solve a shallow-water model, make numerical experiments with the model, and visualize and interpret the results.

10. Course completion methods

The are three meetings every week with short (15-20 min) lectures at the beginning of the lectures, and hands-on practical supervised sessions to progressively develop a 2-dimensional shallow-water model. All exercises are distributed and returned via the Moodle -page.

11. Prerequisites

Basics of either meteorology or oceanography, and sufficient coding skills  - language is a student's choice: Fortran, Matlab, Python, or such like.

12. Recommended optional studies

Numerical meteorology II follows directly from this course. Laboratory course in numerical meteorology requires somewhat deeper knowledge of atmospheric thermodynamics, general circulation, synoptic meteorology, and physical processes that this course.

13. Course content

1. Coupled partial differential equations of the atmospheric/ocean dynamics, 2. Spatial discretization methods, 3. Time-extrapolation methods, 4. Numerical stability and accuracy of the solutions, 5. Visualization of results.

14. Recommended and required literature

All lecture materials are provided for students.

Interested students can read

• Chapters 1-3 from "Atmospheric modeling, data assimilation and predictability" by Eugenia Kalnay (2003; Cambridge University Press).
• Chapters 1-3 from "Numerical weather and climate prediction" by Thomas Tomkins Warner (2011; Cambridge University Press).

15. Activities and teaching methods in support of learning

There are three weekly meetings, and each of them is a practical session where students develop their own codes. Lap-top computers are thus needed in the lectures.

16. Assessment practices and criteria, grading scale

There is a course exam based on the coding exercises (modify an existing code, or make a new type of experiment - mainly to show that the student masters the code he/she has written).

The grading is based on 1. Overall progress made in coding the shallow-water model, and 2. Course exam.

17. Teaching language

English (Finnish if all present are Finnish speaking)