SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY Spring
2004
DEPARTMENT
OF GEOSCIENCES
METEOROLOGY 302.01
The Violent Atmosphere and Ocean
Schedule Number 14036
Website: http://tornado.sfsu.edu/geosciences/classes/m302/m302_01_Sp04.html
Credit: 3
Semester Units Room/Time: TH604; MWF; 1210-1300
Prerequisites:
None.
Instructor: John
P. Monteverdi, Professor of Meteorology; TH613
Phone/Email/FAX: Ext. 87728; montever@sfsu.edu
or montever@earthlink.net; 87705
Office
Hours: F9-10; TTh 11-12or by
appointment
Meteorology
302 fulfills a portion of the Science requirement of the Our Violent Planet cluster in Segment III of the General Education
program. This course is also a
Core Course in Area II: Physical Science of the Liberal Studies degree program.
Students
should note that in order for this course to count towards fulfilling your
General Education Segment III requirement you must: (i) fulfill the other requirements of the cluster (found on
page 174 of the Schedule of Classes);
and, (ii) be at least a Junior while taking any course in the cluster. The other classes in the cluster are
Geology 302 (The Violent Earth) and ONE of the following: (a) Geography 402 (CESD) (The Climatic
Challenge); (b) Geography 600 (CESD) Environmental Problems and Solutions;
and/or (c) PLSI 354 (Politics, The Environment and Social Change).
Scope of the Course
The
general function of any course in the General Education program is to provide
students with the information which is a fundamental underpinning for any
well-educated individual. Students
may rightfully argue that they have enough troubles filling out their majors
program without the added burden of taking on coursework which seems at best
peripheral and at worst totally non-relevant to their educational goals. I believe that this attitude is
expedient and the end result of its implementation is that the student, upon
graduation, is not the least bit "well-rounded". Such a student has limited ability to
make informed judgments about the issues which confront him or her beyond those
which fall into their narrow field of interest.
In
the case of the present course, the instructor has designed the content to help
students become aware of some of the interesting and important aspects of their
immediate environment. In terms of
immediate impact on the environment, severe local storms, major extratropical
and tropical cyclones produce more damage and loss of life than any other weather
event. The controls on these
physical processes can be understood at a conceptual level by the educated
layperson. In one semester, wc can
only hope to cover the basics of one or two of these. In this particular course, we center on hurricanes and tornadic
supercell thunderstorms.
The
science portion of the General Education program is also designed to expose the
student to the ways in which scientists do research. The definition of and testing of a hypothesis is fundamental
to the advancement of any discipline and is termed the "scientific
method". It is the
instructor's experience that students generally have a poor conception of what
is involved in application of the scientific method in the study of a
problem. The present course is
designed to help initiate the student to the scientific method by presenting
them with the results of a number of varied research efforts into the
understanding of destructive storms.
Hopefully, the students will then be able to distinguish between the
conclusions of valid
Metr 302 Syllabus -- Page 2 --
scientific
research efforts and those of "fringe scientists" even though both
may be given equal weight in the media.
Segment
III of General Education has an additional goal beyond those listed above. Courses in this segment should show
that advancement in a particular field has occurred because of
interdisciplinary cooperation;
hence the Segment III title
Relationships of Knowledge.
In the case of severe weather pheonmena,
oceanographers and geologists can contribute much to our understanding of the
local controls on meteorological events.
For example, sea-surface temperature and soil moisture patterns have
dramatic effects on a number of phenomena spanning many scales, from the
development of thunderstorm clusters to the path, number and strength of winter
storms. Flooding and mudslides
have as much to do the local geology and geomorphology as they do to excessive
rainfall. While a detailed
overview of region-specific events is covered in other courses (e.g., Metr
356--California Weather Events), the instructor will stress these general
interelationships when appropriate to illustrate the degree to which
"severity" of storms and other weather events is determined as much
by human patterns of settlement as it is to the strength of the weather event
itself.
Finally,
since no student has fulfilled the goals of a university education unless he or
she can communicate the learned information to others, one of the requirements
of Segment III is that students learn to pass on important information in an
effective manner, both verbally and in written form. Since this class is relatively small, this will be
accomplished by both brief written assignments and in brief oral reports.
Logistics of the Course
When one examines the weather-related
"disasters" the last several years, a number of events stand out
clearly in terms of loss of life and damage to property. Hurricane Andrew's
path of destruction across southern Florida and Louisiana in 1992 and the Oklahoma
City tornadoes of May 1999. These events were associated with
weather phenonmena termed "severe storms" by most people. Andrew was an example of a type of
disturbance called a "tropical cyclone", in which a special set of
circumstances come together to produce an explosive cluster of strong to severe
thunderstorms, that eventually organized to become a five hundered mile wide
organized machine of destruction.
The tornadoes in Oklahoma city occurred with a class of thunderstorm
than in and of itself seems to be designed by nature to maximize the
destructive potential, the "supercell."
Although these two damaging events stand out,
actually both hurricanes and supercells, in general, account for a
disproportionate amount of the damage and deaths related to weather phenomena,
both in the United States in particular, and the world in general. Since my special background and area of
expertise is severe and unusual storms, the class will delve deeply into these
topics. Lectures will be
supplemented with my own slides and video tapes of two of the types of storms
which we will be discussing. The
personal tornado videos were obtained on annual research trips to the Great
Plains to study severe thunderstorms.
This year's trip is May 20 through 6 June.
The point of view for this course will be to delve
into the physical mechanisms that produce these two types of explosive
storms, tropical cyclones and tornadic supercell thunderstorms. Although some overview of general
meteorology will be provided, NO SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE IN EARTH SCIENCE OR
METEOROLOGY IS PRESUPPOSED. There
are no prerequisites for this course, although the instructor presupposes that
the students have had exposure to high school geography, earth science, and
mathematics.
The class will be of lecture format. Tests and assignments will be based
upon the lecture notes, supplemented
by reading materials from the textbooks and handouts. Although attendance will NOT be taken, students are
responsible for getting the lecture notes from a friend or another student.
Metr 302 Syllabus -- Page 3 --
Course Plan
TWO
TAKEHOME WRITING ASSIGNMENTS worth 15% each for a total of 30%.
HOMEWORKS
worth a total of 5%.
CLASS
PARTICIPATION worth 5% (Note Taking For Website).
TWO
MIDTERMS worth 20% each for a total of 40%.
ONE
FINAL (Comprehensive) worth 20% of the grade
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Please Note:
Ordinarily, there will be no MAKE-UP quizzes or exams, and late
assignments will not be accepted. If there is a compelling reason you must miss
an exam or assignment, you MUST contact me beforehand to arrange for a
make-up date or extension.
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Textbooks
Required (all are
paperbacks):
Sheets, Bob and Jack Williams, 2001: Hurricane Watch. Vintage Books. 331 pp. ISBN: 037570390X.
Vasquez, Tim, 2002: Storm Chasing Handbook. Weather Graphics Technologies. 286 pp. ISBN: 0-9706840-3-7
Williams, Jack, 1997: The Weather Book. USA Today. Paperback, ISBN 0-679-73669-7
Zebrowski, Ernest, 1999: Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters
Cambridge University Press , ISBN: 0521654882.
Recommended (if you want to
delve a bit deeperÑno assigned reading):
Grazulis, Thomas P., 2001: The Tornado: Nature's Ultimate Windstorm, University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 0806132582
Henson, Robert, 2002: The Rough Guide to Weather. Rough Guides Ltd., 416 pp. ISBN 1-85828-827-4.
Homework 1: Dist: Wednesday 11
February
Due: Wednesday 18
February
Last Day to Drop Tuesday 24
February
Midterm #1 Monday 1
March
Writing Assignment #1: Dist: Monday 1
March
Due: Monday 15
March
Homework 2: Dist: Monday 15
March
Spring Break Monday-Friday 22-27
March
Cesar Chavez Day Wednesday 30 March
Writing Assignment #2: Dist: Wednesday 7 April
Due: Wednesday 17 April
Midterm #2 Wednesday 28
April
Final Exam Wednesday 19
May 12:10-1300