San Juan Mountains, Colo.
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GES4400 Mountain Weather and Microclimate
Spring 2023
Syllabus
Powerpoints
In Canvas
Labs
In Canvas
Course Overview
Mountain Weather and Microclimate investigates the lowest km or two of Earth's troposphere that resides below the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Unlike the free atmosphere above, this lower zone is stirred by the underlying terrain much like a river flows over rapids and spirals in eddies. It is here, in Earth's near-surface atmospheric riffles and pools, where organisms spend their entire lives and where human and physical geography ensue.
Much of the course content is organized and presented by scales of atmospheric motion in space (horizontal, vertical) and time. I conform to a classification scheme that includes four horizontal scales, from large to small, which are global, synoptic, meso, and micro, but from time to time, straddle scales and subdivide others (as you will see in the next paragraph)! We will loosely tie these spatial scales to temporal scales of minutes, days, and seasons. Within these spatio-temporal scales, you will discover that there exists a plethora of complex, connected, unique, and exciting meteorological and climatological phenomena.
Most of the course focuses on the weather and climate of mountainous regions, which cover about 1/4 of Earth's land surface and, when high plateau regions are included, support about 26% of the word's population. The course looks at fine scales including mountain range scale, topoclimate, microclimate, and squirrel climate. The mountain range scalecaptures terrain features that range from a few km to about 100 km. It is here where orography and mountain wind systems, such as diurnal circulations and terrain-forced flow, manifest. This scale also captures cities, forests, and agricultural landscapes that produce their own set of very interesting atmospheric processes. Next in line is the topographical climate (topoclimate), also called local climate, that ranges from hundreds of meters to 10 km. Landsurfaces ranging from golf courses, parks, vast industrial spaces, small drainages, city parks, reservoirs and lakes, come into focus here. Next, microclimate scales (a few m above and below ground surface) capture the atmospheric processes that surround buildings, small groups of trees, talus slopes, overpasses, alleyways, gardens, and courtyards. The finest end of the microclimate scale discussed in the course, what I call the squirrel scale, experiences overall lower and highly variable wind speeds, less mixing of the air, and active water vapor and thermal radiation transfer. This ultra thin layer contrasts, for example, one side of a tree to the other, the crown of a tree to its base, or a stream's water surface to an adjacent gravel bar's surface. The layer is characterized by rapid changes in atmospheric elements, both vertically and horizontally. The few mm of air space above the surface is called the laminar boundary layer. This is where the wind speed decreases to 0.
The course implements proof of concept project-based learning where students collect and analyze environmental data, relate findings to theory, and present results. This means that you will explore, ponder, question, design, create, monitor, assess, evaluate, and share. Fortunately, our mid-latitude location at the interface of the Great Plains and the Southern Rocky Mountains grants easy access to an out-of-this-world smorgasbord of field sites.
Dr. Vogt sincerely hopes that this course instills a deeper curiosity of the atmosphere near the surface and that one or two students in the class will recognize the challenges and unknowns within the discipline and will go on to earn graduate degrees and become climatologists or meteorologists.
Readings
Textbooks from which additional readings will be assigned
- Bailey, W.G., Oke, T.R. and Rouse, W. eds., 1997. Surface Climates of Canada (Vol. 4). McGill‐Queen's Press‐MQUP.
- Barry, R.G., 2008. Mountain weather and climate. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press.
- Barry, Roger G., and Peter D. Blanken. Microclimate and local climate. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- Chow, F.K. ed., 2013. Mountain weather research and forecasting: recent progress and current challenges. Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London: Springer.
- Geiger, Rudolf, Robert H. Aron, and Paul Todhunter. The climate near the ground. Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
- Munn, Robert Edward. Biometeorological methods. Elsevier, 2018.
- Oke, T.R., 2002. Boundary layer climates. Routledge.
- Whiteman, C.D., 2000. Mountain meteorology: fundamentals and applications. Oxford University Press
READINGS: Here is a good set of readings for those interested in diving deeper into meteorology (updated Jan. 23, 2023).
Bach, A. 2013. Mountain climate, In Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions, eds. L. Price, M.
Barry, R.G. 1973. A climatological transect on the east slope of the Front Range, Colorado. Arctic and Alpine Research 5(2): 89-110.
Barry, R.G. 2008. Mountain Weather and Climate. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. pp. 11-14, 401-407.
Chow, F.K., De Wekker, S.F. and Snyder, B.J., 2013. Mountain weather research and forecasting: recent progress and current challenges. Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London: Springer (added to list spring 2020)..
Childs, S.J. and Schumacher, R.S., 2019. An Updated Severe Hail and Tornado Climatology for Eastern Colorado. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 58(10): 2273-2293.
Colle, B.A. (2015). Cold Air Damming. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 62-68). Elsevier Inc.
Colorado State University (CSU). 2014. Colorado Flood 2013 Storm Page. URLLinks to an external site. (last accessed Jan. 2021).
Doswell, C.A. 2001. Severe Convective Storms—An Overview. Meteorological Monographs, 50: 1–26.
Doswell, C. A. 1980. Synoptic-scale environments associated with High Plains severe thunderstorms. Bull. Amer. Meteo. Soc. 61(11): 1388–1400.
Durran, D. 1990. Mountain waves and downslope winds. In Atmospheric Processes over Complex Terrain. Meteorological Monographs, 23(45): 59-81.
Durran, D.R. (2015). Downslope Winds. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 69-74). Elsevier Inc.
Durran, D.R. (2015). Lee Waves and Mountain Waves. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 95-102). Elsevier Inc.
Epifanio, C.C. (2015). Lee Vortices. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 84-94). Elsevier Inc.
Fovell, R.G., Brewer, M.J. and Garmong, R.J., 2022. The December 2021 Marshall Fire: Predictability and gust forecasts from operational models. Atmosphere, 13(5), p.765.
Haby, J. The Ultimate Weather Education Website (including Haby Hints pages). TheWeatherPrediction.com. URL. (last accessed Jan. 2024).
Hansen, W., J. Chronic, and J. Matelock. 1978. Climatography of the Front Range urban corridor and vicinity, Colorado. US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1019.
Holton, J. Curry, J. and J. Pyle. 2003. Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences - Severe Storms, Volumes 1-6. (pp. 2054,2061). Elsevier.
Holton, J. Curry, J. and J. Pyle. 2003. Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences - Valley Winds, Volumes 1-6. (pp. 2481,2490). Elsevier.
Johnson, R.H., R.S. Schumacher, J.H. Ruppert, D.T. Lindsey, J.E. Ruthford, and L. Kriederman. 2014. The role of convective outflow in the Waldo Canyon Fire. Monthly Weather Review 142: 3061-3080.
Linacre, E., and B. Geerts. 1998. The Reynolds', Richardson's, and Froude numbers. Online (UWYO) Nov. 1998. PDF. URL (last accessed Nov. 2017).
Maddox, R.A. 1980. Mesoscale convective complexes. Bulletin American Meteorological Society 61(11): 1374-1378.
Mahoney, K., Ralph, F.M., Wolter, K., Doesken, N., Dettinger, M., Gottas, D., Coleman, T. and White, A. 2015. Climatology of extreme daily precipitation in Colorado and its diverse spatial and seasonal variability. Journal of Hydrometeorology 16(2): 781-792.
Mock, C. J. 1996. Climatic controls and spatial variations of precipitation in the western United States. Journal of Climate 9(5), pp.1111-1125.
Mott, R., V. Vionnet, and T. Grünewald. 2018. The seasonal snow cover dynamics: review on wind-driven coupling processes. Frontiers in Earth Science 6(197).
Nelson, M. 2007. Colorado Weather Almanac. Johnson Books, Boulder, CO. Chapter 5 - Two Centuries of Weather Observing.
North, G.R., Pyle, J.A. and Zhang, F. eds., 2014. Encyclopedia of atmospheric sciences (Vol. 1). Elsevier.
Parish, T.R. (2015). Katabatic Winds. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 75-79). Elsevier Inc.
Pielke, R.A. (2015). Land and Sea Breezes. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 80-83). Elsevier Inc.
Price, B. Byers, D. Friend, and T. Kohler, pp. 41-84. University of California Press.
Schar, C. (2015). Orographic Effects. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 103-113). Elsevier Inc.
Schlatter, T., and D. Floyd. 2013. Deep Hail: Idalia, Colorado, April 29, 2012, Weatherwise 66(1): 31-36.
Smith, R.B. (2015). Overview. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 57-61). Elsevier Inc.
Vogt, B. 2020. "Colorado’s Terrain-Tied Meteorology." In Denver and the Rocky Mountain West, Ed. Michael Keables.
Vogt, B. 2019 (updated 2023). “Mountain Meteorology.” Oxford Bibliographies in "Geography." Ed. Barney Warf. New York: Oxford University Press, Nov. 26, 2019. URL.
Vogt, B. 2011. Exploring cloud-to-ground lightning earth highpoint attachment geography by peak current. Earth Interactions 15(8): 1-16.
Vogt, B. 2014. Visualizing summertime lightning patterns on Colorado Fourteeners. The Professional Geographer 66(1): 41-57.
Vogt, B., and S. Hodanish. 2014. A high-resolution lightning map of the state of Colorado. Monthly Weather Review 142:2353-60.
Vogt, B., and S. Hodanish. 2016. A geographical analysis of warm season lightning / landscape interactions across Colorado, USA. Applied Geography 75: 93-103.
Whiteman, C. D. 2000a. Mountain Meteorology: Fundamentals and Applications. Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford. Chapter 10 - Terrain-Forced Flows.
Whiteman, C. D. 2000b. Mountain Meteorology: Fundamentals and Applications. Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford. Chapter 11 - Diurnal Mountain Winds.
Zardi, D. (2015). Valley Winds. In Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences: Second Edition (pp. 114-134). Elsevier Inc.
Journals from which additional readings will be assigned
- Agriculture and Forest Meteorology
- Arctic and Alpine Research
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Earth Interactions
- Journal of Hydrometeorology
- Monthly Weather Review