Water in the Atmosphere

This course deals with atmospheric processes on all relevant scales and relevant to water: the global scale (clouds and climate), intermediate scale (deep convection, turbulence), to the smallest scales of cloud droplets and aerosols. After reviewing fundamental concepts of radiative transfer and atmospheric thermodynamics, the theory of turbulent atmospheric boundary layers will be treated. This paves the way towards addressing cloud formation processes, i.e. cloud dynamics and cloud-microphysics, and rain formation. Apart from treating the underlying principles and concepts, also attention will be devoted to the modelling and forecasting of the phenomena.

The grade will be based on a combination of mandatory homework exercises and a written exam. The final grade will be the average of the two grades with the proviso that the grade for the exam must be 5.0 or higher.