GEOG 320- Boundary Layer Meteorology
University of Tennessee at Martin
Department of Agriculture, Geosciences & Natural Resources
Course Syllabus, Spring 2013
Instructor:
Office:
Email:
Office Hours:
Course Time:
Room:
Required Text:
Chris Karmosky
201-C Johnson EPS
ckarmosk@utm.edu
M 2:00-3:00, T 1:00-2:30, R 12:15-1:00, otherwise by
appointment (email: ckarmosk@utm.edu)
MWF 1:00 to 1:50
227 EPS
Oke, T.R. (1987) Boundary Layer Climates
Course Description:
The primary purpose of this course is to describe, analyze, and to simulate near-surface
climates and climatic processes. “Near-surface” implies the lowest kilometer or so of the
atmosphere (but with an emphasis on the first few tens of meters) to a few meters into the
substrate. The term “climate” refers to spatio-temporal patterns of air-movement,
temperature, humidity, and other atmospheric concentrations (i.e. “climatic elements”),
while “climatic processes” is to be interpreted to mean the exchange of momentum, heat,
water vapor, and other entities which are both governed by and control the patterns of the
climatic elements.
From a horizontal scale point of view, this course is mainly restricted to atmospheric
phenomena in the micro-scale category. Such features typically possess time scales from
a second to about a day.
Prerequisites:
All students taking this course should have already completed Geography 305 (Principles
of Meteorology). A strong understanding of the material from this course will be assumed.
You may need to review your notes from GEOG 305 throughout this course. Failure to
complete the necessary prerequisite work in Meteorology and Mathematics will not be an
acceptable justification for inadequate performance in this course even if you’ve been
granted permission to take this course prior to meeting said prerequisites.
**N.B.: Students are advised that 320 is considerably more demanding conceptually,
theoretically, analytically, and mathematically than 305. Students should ideally have
completed Mathematics 251 (Calculus), although completion of Mathematics 140
(Algebra) and 170 (Trigonometry) or 185 (Precalculus) will suffice.
Evaluation:
The grade for this course will be based on presentation and discussion on a severe
weather topic, midterm exam, final project, and final exam:
Nine Exercises (20 points each)
Two Midterm Exams (100 Points)
Final Exam (100 Points)
Total: Approximately 480 Points
Students are expected to take all quizzes, midterms, and the final exam on the scheduled
dates. No make-ups will be administered unless the student has made prior arrangements
or has a valid excuse. If no prior arrangements are made to take an exam or quiz at an
alternate time, the exam or quiz shall be administered at the sole discretion of the
instructor. Unless otherwise stated, all projects are due at 5PM on the due date at the top of
the assignment. Electronic submissions of typed work will be accepted. Late work will be
accepted, but only for partial credit. A maximum deduction of 50% of the point value will
apply for work more than 48 hours late. No late work will be accepted after April 25.
Notes about the Exercises (Adapted from the Illustrious Todd Albert):
1. How to approach them:
The worst way to approach an exercise is to immediately plunge into the
calculations without adequate planning and preparation. The steps involved in
producing a good exercise are as follows:
a. Read through the exercise in its entirety. If there are any terms you do not
understand find out what they mean.
b. In your lecture notes, course notes or text, find the appropriate equations or
other methods needed to answer the problem. Make sure you have all the
necessary information, variables, etc. needed to use those equations or other
methods. If you haven’t, go to appropriate sources to acquire them.
c. Do the calculations in rough copy. Make sure the answers you get sound
reasonable. If you are unsure what sort of answer is reasonable, you might
want to consult the text or notes or ask me to check whether your result is
conceivable.
<<Inconceivable? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.>>
d. Repeat your calculations, preferably independently (i.e. without working from
your first draft). Do this even if your answers sounded reasonable. If the
results of your repeated calculations are the same as the first set, fine. If not,
you will need to identify where the error is and check your answers again.\
e. If you are satisfied that your calculations do not contain any blunders, write
them up in final form, taking care (i) to pay attention to matters of
presentation and (ii) to transfer your rough calculations accurately and
completely to the fair copy
2. Seeking Help:
I am prepared to assist you with the exercises, but I am not prepared to do the
work for you. Remember that we generally do exercises in this course because
they help you understand and remember the material. Generally the important
aspects of an exercise are devising the approach, acquiring the necessary
information, and setting the problem up, rather than actually completing the
mechanics of the calculation. Therefore, I am not going to set everything up for
you so that all you have to do is plug in the numbers (the least creative part of the
whole process).
You are welcome to bring exercise problems to me in office hours, however,
before doing this you should have made every effort to seek the solution to your
problem in your lecture notes, the course notes, and the text. (This is yet another
reason to start the exercises as soon as they are handed out. If you start them the
night before, you will incur great difficulty). I am not going to respond favorably
to “I can’t do this exercise”, “I don’t know how to approach any of the parts”, or
“I don’t have any ideas at all about which are the necessary equations or methods
to solve this problem”. I am not going to be very receptive to these concerns
because all of the exercises are deeply rooted in the lecture material and/or course
notes. If your state is as desperate as these quotes suggest (and I’ve heard all of
them before…), you have not been reviewing the lecture material and are trying to
get me to do your work for you.
3. Presentation:
Assignments are graded both on the basis of their accuracy and on aspects of
presentation. Whatever you do after leaving UTM will almost certainly involve
writing reports in which the results of some project you have completed need to
be explained clearly to other people. Practicing this skill now when the stakes are
lower (“I got a B” is better than “I missed that promotion”) is ideal. Also, there is
a strong correlation between the clarity of one’s thought processes and the clarity
of their presentation of them. Finally, it is impossible for me to spend inordinate
amounts of time trying to read poor handwriting, decipher obscure calculations
and/or guess what you did to get a particular answer.
You will not suffer for the presentation portion of your assignment grades if you
follow the following simple principles:
a. Write clearly, in formal English. Txt spk is nt ok lol. Use complete
sentences, using accurate punctuation and correct spelling. “Let’s eat,
Grandma” is different from “Let’s eat Grandma”. Punctuation matters!
b. Work should be structured logically. For example, if a quantity is
needed at various points throughout a set of calculations, it should be
evaluated at the beginning of a calculation and used at all appropriate
places subsequently (rather than calculated when first needed and just
thrown in without explanation subsequently). Present your calculations
in an order that reflects the order things are evaluated.
c. No exercise report is complete if it consists solely of calculations.
There are undoubtedly assumptions made, values of variables needed,
and explanations of your method to be offered. This should be done
and explained in text. It should be possible for another member of the
class to reproduce your calculations exactly based on your report
without having to guess what you did or what value you used for a
particular parameter or what a particular symbol means.
d. Unless a symbol is a standard one from the symbol set employed in the
lectures, it should be defined before it is used. In fact, it is better to
clearly define all symbols used prior to employing them.
e. Take care showing implied precision in your answers. It should be
consistent with the known precision of any values used in the
calculation and with the nature of the mathematical manipulation
employed. You will not earn full marks if your answer is shown in a
fashion that suggests it is more or less precise than is justified. The
safest way of determining how many significant figures may be shown
is to look at the implied precision of input variables to a calculation
and to evaluate how much uncertainty is produced in the answer by the
uncertainty in those input variables. Your answer should be stated in a
fashion that is consistent with the implied precision. Don’t be a slave
to your calculator!! All of the figures shown on its display might not
be significant. Also, sometimes you might need to add zeroes at the
end of a numerical answer (2.5 + 4.5 = 7.0, *NOT* “7”, though your
calculator will display “7”)
f. Don’t forget to show the units of a quantity employed in a calculation
or in an answer where the number has them. Only units of the SI are
acceptable in this course. Don’t use American customary units,
millibars, atmospheres, ergs, dynes, drams, fathoms, fortnights, etc. in
calculations. If you require a quantity and can only find it in American
or cgs units, you should introduce it in this form and then immediately
convert it into SI.
g. Use diagrams and graphs if appropriate and as long as they are referred
to in your text and are captioned, annotated, and neat.
h. Any quantities that are needed and are not provided in the question
should be attributed. State the source from which the quantity was
obtained.
i. You may use mathematical tables as a source of integral, derivatives,
trigonometric identities, etc. If so, identify the source.
j. Don’t start any numerical calculations until you have any required
equation in its simplest form. Some problems will be impossible if you
attempt to solve them in a step-by-step manner, because required
quantities will be unknown. Instead, take all the relevant expressions
and substitute into (ideally) a single equation to obtain the answer and
make the unknown quantity cancel. This method also reduces the
effects of rounding errors in intermediate answers
k. Highlight, underline, or “box” your final answers. Don’t make me hunt
or guess which figure is your final answer.
4. Ethics:
The exercises are worth more than one third of your final grade. As a result, I insist
that the score you obtain on the exercises fairly reflect your own effort and
understanding. However, I am also aware that a certain amount of collaboration is a
valuable learning experience **if and only if** all students are contributing equally
and the relationships are not parasitic. To encourage creative, ethical and meaningful
collaboration, we will start off the semester with “Type I rules of collaboration”. In
the event that I encounter any significant examples of inappropriate collaboration, I
will announce a switch to “Type II rules for collaboration”, which are far less liberal.
Your behavior will determine which rules apply.
Please note that every instructor has their own views as to what is considered
unethical behavior, and what occurs in other courses is not necessarily applicable here.
Type I Rules for Collaboration:
You are free to discuss general approaches to problems. You may meet to discuss
what equations are needed to complete the exercises and to discuss the general
approach to solving the problems encountered. You may sketch out answers. You
may talk about what sorts of answers would be reasonable and expected. You should
not work on exercises as a group, as this will inevitably lead to unacceptable
similarities in written work which I will be unable to distinguish from cheating.
Basically, any collaborative activities should be primarily verbal or involve only
minimal note-taking. You should not be doing the calculations or writing up the
exercises in a collaborative environment. Remember that your answers should contain
narrative material into which the actual calculations are embedded. This should not in
any circumstances be similar to that of another student as it should represent your
ideas, your assumptions, and your interpretations.
Type II Rules for Collaboration:
No collaboration of any type is permitted. I mean this quite literally. Text and note
sources and consultation with me are the only means by which you can get assistance
on the exercises.
Whichever set of rules is in effect, other forms of unethical behavior will be handled
according to the guidelines set forth in the Faculty Handbook, and according to the
rules set forth in the Student Handbook and addressed above.
More About Academic Honesty (Can you see yet that I take this seriously??):
UTM requires me to place a blub about academic honesty in my syllabus, and this is my
standard note. While it’s my hope that this never becomes an issue, this is here for
everyone’s benefit.
Academic honesty and integrity is expected in this course (and any other course at UTMartin for that matter). You are expected to produce work that is entirely your own for
each and every assignment. All exams are closed-note, closed-book, and closed-neighbor
unless otherwise specified. Take-home assignments must also be your own work. While
asking questions regarding the subject material is permissible, copying and/or
paraphrasing another person’s work will be considered plagiarism. Facilitating academic
dishonesty is also considered academic dishonesty. Operating by the “better safe than
sorry” principle works best, and I would encourage students who feel uncomfortable
giving assistance to a student to refer that student to me for assistance. Any academic
dishonesty will result in a failing grade for the assignment, and will be reported to the
Division of Student Affairs.
Religious Holidays:
I will make every reasonable effort to allow students to observe their religious holidays
without penalty. If you must miss class, however, it is still your responsibility to make up
any missed material. Please let me know the dates you will miss well ahead of time.
Student Success Center, Office of Disability Services:
If you require additional accommodations as the result of a disability, it is your
responsibility, within the first two weeks of class, to coordinate with the Office of
Disability Services as per the guidelines below.
Students have the following roles in the academic accommodation process:

Identify themselves to the Office of Disabilities Services if they need
accommodations;

Provide documentation of their disability to the Office of Disabilities Services;

Participate with the Office of Disabilities Services in the interactive process of
determining and implementing reasonable accommodations;

Make arrangements for accommodations by providing their professors with a
letter from the Office of Disabilities Services approving accommodations and
work directly with the professors and staff involved in the provision of an
approved accommodation; and

Inform the Office of Disabilities Services when accommodations are not
provided, accommodations are not working, accommodations need to be
modified, or symptoms change.
I will work within the guidelines suggested by the student success center, and will take all
reasonable actions necessary to provide necessary accommodations.
Please visit the following page for more information:
http://www.utm.edu/departments/success/disability.php
Writing Center:
The Hortense Parrish Writing center is a resource for any student who would like
individualized help in improving their writing. The Writing Center is open to students for
tutoring, computer use, printing, workshops, reading, and general study, and I encourage
you to take advantage of this resource! Their web URL is below:
http://www.utm.edu/departments/writingcenter/
***I reserve the right to make changes to the syllabus as we go along. You will still be
responsible for the changes announced in class***
Course Schedule: (Assigned Readings in Italics)
Week 0:
Friday (1/11)
Introductions and Expectations
Week 1:
Week 2:
Monday (1/14)
Physics of Electromagnetic
Radiation, Terminology and
concepts (Reading 1 posted on
blackboard)
Wednesday (1/16)
Spectral Quality of Radiation
(Reading 2 posted on blackboard)
Friday (1/18)
Radiation Exchange (Reading 3
posted on blackboard)
Monday (1/21)
MLK Holiday (No Class)
Wednesday (1/23)
Radiance and View Factors
(Reading 4 posted on blackboard)
Friday (1/25)
Absorption and Emission of
Radiation by Gases (Reading 5
posted on blackboard)
Week 3:
Week 4:
Week 5:
Week 6:
Monday (1/28)
Blackbody and Real Body
Radiation (Reading 6 posted on
blackboard)
Wednesday (1/30)
Radiative Transfer (Reading 7
posted on blackboard)
Friday (2/1)
Scattering and Reflection
(Reading 8 posted on blackboard)
Monday (2/4)
Energy and Mass Exchanges (Oke,
Chapter 1)
Wednesday (2/6)
Energy and Mass Exchanges (Oke,
Chapter 1)
Friday (2/8)
Energy and Mass Exchanges (Oke,
Chapter 1)
Monday (2/11)
Catch-up and Review for Exam #1
Wednesday (2/13)
**Exam #1**
Friday (2/15)
Physical Basis of Boundary Layer
Climates (Oke, Chapter 2)
Monday (2/18)
Physical Basis of Boundary Layer
Climates (Oke, Chapter 2)
Wednesday (2/20)
Physical Basis of Boundary Layer
Climates (Oke, Chapter 2)
Friday (2/22)
Physical Basis of Boundary Layer
Climates (Oke, Chapter 2)
Week 7:
Week 8:
Week 9:
Week 10:
Week 11:
Monday (2/25)
Climates of Simple NonVegetated Surfaces (Oke, Chapter
3)
Wednesday (2/27)
Climates of Simple NonVegetated Surfaces (Oke, Chapter
3)
Friday (3/1)
Climates of Simple NonVegetated Surfaces (Oke, Chapter
3)
Monday (3/4)
Spring Break (No Class)
Wednesday (3/6)
Spring Break (No Class)
Friday (3/8)
Spring Break (No Class)
Monday (3/11)
Climates of Simple NonVegetated Surfaces (Oke, Chapter
3)
Wednesday (3/13)
Catch-up and Review for Exam #2
Friday (3/15)
**Exam #2**: Ch. 2 and 3
Monday (3/18)
Climates of Vegetated Surfaces
(Oke, Chapter 4)
Wednesday (3/20)
Climates of Vegetated Surfaces
(Oke, Chapter 4)
Friday (3/22)
Climates of Vegetated Surfaces
(Oke, Chapter 4)
Monday (3/25)
Climates of Non-Uniform Terrain
(Oke, Chapter 5)
Week 12:
Week 13:
Week 14:
Week 15:
Wednesday (3/27)
Climates of Non-Uniform Terrain
(Oke, Chapter 5)
Friday (3/29)
Good Friday Holiday (No Class)
Monday (4/1)
Climates of Non-Uniform Terrain
(Oke, Chapter 5)
Wednesday (4/3)
Intentionally Modified Climates
(Oke, Chapter 7)
Friday (4/5)
Intentionally Modified Climates
(Oke, Chapter 7)
Monday (4/8)
Intentionally Modified Climates
(Oke, Chapter 7)
Wednesday (4/10)
Inadvertent Climate Modification
(Oke, Chapter 8)
Friday (4/12)
Inadvertent Climate Modification
(Oke, Chapter 8)
Monday (4/15)
Inadvertent Climate Modification
(Oke, Chapter 8)
Wednesday (4/17)
Inadvertent Climate Modification
(Oke, Chapter 8)
Friday (4/19)
Inadvertent Climate Modification
(Oke, Chapter 8)
Monday (4/22)
Air Pollution in the Boundary
Layer (Oke, Chapter 9)
Wednesday (4/24)
Air Pollution in the Boundary
Layer (Oke, Chapter 9)
Friday (4/26)
Week 16:
Final Exam:
Review for Final Exam
TBA
Please refer to http://www.utm.edu/departments/registrar/final.php for any
changes regarding the final exam scheduling.