University of Washington
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Overview:
Areas: forcastong, climate change, using remote sensing to monitor weather and climate.
First year: basic courses in atmospheric science and mathematical. depending upon their
special interests, students may take courses in physics, mathematics, chemistry,
oceanography, geophysics, engineering, and other fields.
The Department of Atmospheric Sciences offers programs of graduate study leading to
the degrees of Master of Sciences (M.S.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). The
department also cooperates in offering studies leading to degrees of M.S. and Ph.D. under
the interdepartmental Geophysics and Atmospheric Chemistry Programs, participates in
the Astrobiology graduate program, the Global and Environmental Chemistry (GEC)
Program, and under less formal arrangements with other degree-granting units on
campus.
Research assistantships are available for graduate students working towards advanced
degrees. Graduate students are required to spend one quarter as a teaching assistant early
in their graduate career, and a second quarter after passing their General Exam. Normally,
research assistantships may be held for up to three years for the M.S. Program and six
years for the Ph.D. Program.
Each candidate for an advanced degree is expected to attend Department of Atmospheric
Sciences colloquia, and to participate in the Graduate Student Forum, which meets to
discuss academic and nonacademic issues of interest to graduate students.
Areas:
1) Climate Change
Faculty and students in the department are engaged in a number of projects
directed toward a better understanding of climate variability and long-term
climate change, including: dynamics of atmospheric variability on time scales of
weeks or longer and its relation to extreme events such as droughts and
unseasonable warmth or cold; the El Nino phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific
and its effects on global climate; decadal variability in the mid-latitude and polar
regions; the predictability of El Nino and other natural climate phenomenon; long
term variability of the deep ocean circulation driven by gradients of heat and salt;
the role of clouds, aerosols, sea-ice and land vegetation in determining the
sensitivity of the climate system; and the problem of distinguishing between
natural climate variability and climate change induced by human activity. The
research involves the analysis of global data sets, many of them derived from
satellite observations, and experiments with an array of numerical models of the
various components of the climate system.
Faculty:
1) David Battisti
Professor, Atmospheric Sciences
Associate Vice Provost and Director, Earth Initiative
Research interests:
Large-scale Atmosphere/Ocean Interaction, Paleoclimate
2) Dennis Hartman
My research deals with low-frequency variability in the atmosphere and climate system,
and with climate change.
My climate research focuses on the interaction of dynamics, radiation and cloud
processes, and their role in determining the sensitivity of the global climate to forcings
such as increasing carbon dioxide or aerosol burden. Recent work has resulted in a "Fixed
Anvil Temperature" or FAT Hypothesis, that indicates that on the basis of fundamental
physical processes that the temperature at the tops of tropical anvil clouds should remain
about the same during climate change. This tends to decouple the emission temperature
from the surface temperature. On the other hand, other arguments suggest that the net
radiation at the top of the atmosphere in regions of tropical deep convection and nearby
trade cumulus regions should be the same. This implies that the albedo of tropical
convective anvils should increase with surface temperature. These considerations are
based on large-scale energetic requirements and not on cloud microphysical arguments.
More detail can be learned by reading the papers, which are availabel by clicking
Research Papers in the bar to the left.
In the area of dynamics, I am currently interested in the atmospheric dynamical processes
that give rise to intrinsic low-frequency variability, especially the interaction of transient
and stationary waves with zonal jets in middle latitudes. This blends into a general
discussion of "annular modes" of variability and the way they couple the troposphere and
stratosphere, and may couple ozone depletion with greenhouse gas warming.
3) John Michael Wallace
Research Interests
My research and that of my students has been directed at improving our understanding of
global climate and its year-to-year and decade-to-decade variations, making use of
observational data. We have contributed to the identification and understanding of a
number of atmospheric phenomena, including the vertically propagating planetary waves
that drive the quasi-biennial oscillation in zonal winds in the equatorial stratosphere, the
4-5-day period easterly waves that modulate daily rainfall over the tropical oceans, and
the dominant spatial patterns in month-to-month and year-to-year climate variability,
including the one through which the El Nio phenomenon in the tropical Pacific influences
climate over North America. We have contributed to documenting the existence of El
Nino- like variability on a decade to decade time scale (the so called 'Pacific Decadal
Oscillation'). We are currently investigating two analogous patterns of weather and
climate variability: the Northern and Southern Hemisphere 'annular modes' (see
http://tao.atmos.washington.edu/ao/) which have played a prominent role in the climatic
trends of the past 30 years.
4) Stephen G. Warren
Professor of Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Quaternary
Research.
Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, Harvard University, 1973.
Research Interests
Solar and infrared radiation processes in snow, clouds and sea ice. Antarctic climate.
Infrared radiation in the Antarctic atmosphere. Remote sensing of Antarctic ozone.
Incorporation of aerosols into snow. Polar caps of Mars. Global cloud climatology.
Others: Igor Kamenkovich, Edward Sarachik