Meteorology Courses

Meteorology 111
Synoptic Applications: Current weather discussions and introduction to synoptic-scale interpretation of meteorology.

Meteorology 201
Introductory Seminar: An overview of the atmospheric sciences, the meteorology program, weather forecasting, and general university procedures.

Meteorology 206
Introduction to Meteorology: Basic concepts in meteorology, including atmospheric measurements, radiation, stability, precipitation, winds, fronts, forecasting, and severe weather. Applied topics include global warming, ozone depletion, world climates, weather safety, and atmospheric optics.
Spring Semester
Fall Semester

Meteorology 227
Computational Meteorology: An introduction to computer programming using FORTRAN with focus on meteorological applications. Emphasis on basics of good programming techniques and style through extensive practice in top-down design, writing, running, and debugging small programs. Topics include operations and functions, selective execution, repetitive execution, arrays, input/output, file processing, and subprograms

Meteorology 298/398/498
Cooperative Education: Required of all cooperative education students. Students must register for this course prior to commencing the work period.

Meteorology 301
General Meteorology I: Global distribution of temperature, wind, and atmospheric constituents; atmospheric thermodynamics, radiative transfer, global energy balance, storms and clouds, introductory dynamics.

Meteorology 311
Introduction to Synoptic Meteorology: Concepts of weather map plotting and analysis. Introduction to forecasting and to the use of real-time UNIDATA computer products.

Meteorology 321
Meteorology Internship: Supervised practical experience in a professional meteorological agency. Experiences may include providing weather information for radio, TV, utilities, government agencies, construction, or agribusiness.

Meteorology 324
Energy and the Environment. Renewable and non-renewable energy resources. Origin, occurrence, and extraction of fossil fuels. Nuclear, wind, and solar energy. Energy efficiency. Environmental effects of energy production and use, including air pollution, acid precipitation, groundwater contamination, and nuclear waste disposal, and global climate change. Credits: 3; Offered: Spring.

Meteorology 341
Atmospheric Physics I: Basic laws of thermodynamics, thermodynamics of water vapor, mixtures of gases, stability, hydrostatics, cloud physics.

Meteorology 342
Atmospheric Physics II: Precipitation physics, radar, atmospheric radiation, atmospheric optics, and atmospheric electricity.

Meteorology 404/504
Global Change: Biogeochemical cycles, ozone chemistry, global energy balance, structure and circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, climate modeling, climate variability; and implications for agriculture, water resources, energy use, sustainable development, and public policy. Human dimensions and ethical issues of global environmental change.

Meteorology 406
Climates of the Continents: The major climate controls and how they affect the world climate. Climate classification. Combining controls and classification to explain the pattern of climates of the different continents and the world.

Meteorology 407/507
Mesoscale Meteorology: Physical nature and practical consequences of mesoscale atmospheric phenomena. Mesoscale convective systems, fronts, terrain-forced circulations. Observations, analysis, and prediction of mesoscale phenomena.

Meteorology 411/511
Synoptic Meteorology: Current weather forecasting and discussion. Applications of atmospheric physics and dynamics in real-time weather situations. Use of UNIDATA computer products.

Meteorology 416x-516x
Hydrologic modeling and analysis. Study of basic principles of hydrologic modeling, including rainfall-runoff analysis, input data, uncertainty analysis, lumped and distributed modeling, parameter estimation and sensitivity analysis, and the use of models in applied hydrology. Practice implementing a range of common models, to study hydrologic topics such as flood forecasting and land use change.

Meteorology 417/517
Mesoscale Forecasting Laboratory: Real-time computer analysis of current weather, with emphasis on small-scale features. Studies of severe weather, lake-effect snow, CSI, cold-air damming.

Meteorology 432/532
Instrumentation and Measurements: Measurement of meteorological variables and instruments used, including surface, upper air, and remote sensors; measurement errors, signal processing, recording and archiving; quality assurance.
Syllabus PDF or Word Document

Meteorology 443
Dynamic Meteorology I: Conservation laws, governing equations, circulation and vorticity. Development of quasigeostrophic theory.

Meteorology 452x/552x
Physics of Climate: Exploration of the fundamental physical principles that govern the climate systems of the earth and other planets.

Meteorology 454
Dynamic Meteorology II: Planetary boundary layer, linear perturbation theory, atmospheric wave motions, baroclinic and convective instability, mesoscale circulations.

Meteorology 455/555
Dynamic Meteorology III: General circulation of the atmosphere, including energy, momentum and hydrologic balances. Weather forecast and analysis systems.

Meteorology 471-571
History of Modern Meteorology.  Development of meteorological theories and numerical weather prediction, discoveries of important meteorological phenomena, and impact of weather and climate on important historical events.

Meteorology 480
Studies in Oceanography. Courses taken at Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and other marine biological stations are transferred to Iowa State University under this number.

Meteorology 490
Independent Study
A. Synoptic Meteorology
B. Dynamic Meteorology
C. Physical Meteorology
D. Instrumentation

Meteorology 499
Senior Research: Required of all senior meteorology majors. Research projects in collaboration with faculty. Written and oral presentations of results at the end of the semester.

Meteorology 505
Biometeorology: The heat exchange near the ground. Radiation, turbulence, conductance and evaporation as components of the heat balance. Temperature, wind and humidity conditions in the microclimate. Modification of the microclimate. Computer modeling of biophysical processes. Semester project required.

Meteorology 518
Microwave Remote Sensing:  Overview of relevant electromagnetic theory and antenna theory. Planck emission and the radiative transfer equation. The electrical properties of natural media (atmosphere, soil, and vegetation) at microwave frequencies. Atmospheric sounding, remote sensing of soil and vegetation water content, data inversion, and data assimilation.

Meteorology 542
Physical Meteorology: Planetary atmospheres, radiative equilibrium models, radiative transfer, the upper atmosphere, remote sounding from satellites.

Meteorology 543
Advanced Dynamic Meteorology I: The first half of a two-semester sequence. Governing equations, scale analysis, simple types of wave motion in the atmosphere, instability theory.

Meteorology 544
Advanced Dynamic Meteorology II: Continuation of 543. General circulation and dynamics of zonally symmetric circulations, atmospheric energetics, nonlinear dynamics of planetary waves.

Meteorology 561
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics: Basic concept of rotating fluid dynamics, governing equations and boundary conditions, dynamics of vorticity, potential vorticity and geostrophic motion, wave motion in a rotating system, dynamics of Ekman and Stewartson layers, ocean circulation.

Meteorology 590
Special Topics: Topics of current interest.
A. Boundary-layer Meteorology
B. Tropical Meteorology
C. Mesoscale Meteorology
D. Global Climate Systems
E. Climate Modeling
F. Numerical Weather Prediction
G. Satellite Observations
H. Statistical Methods in Meteorology
I. Field Observations
J. Low Frequency Modes
K. Cloud Physics
L. Atmospheric Radiation

Meteorology 605
Micrometeorology: Atmospheric boundary layer, structure and dynamics. Turbulence, soil influences, measurements and empirical relations for wind and temperature profiles near the ground. Simulation of boundary layer structure and dynamics.

Meteorology 699
Research.