Calendar · Lecture Notes
MIT OpenCourseWare
Fluid Dynamics of the Atmosphere and Ocean
Art: US Army, US Weather map from 1872, 1872 · Public domain
- Instructor
- Prof. James Hansen
- Term
- Fall 2004
- Level
- Graduate
- What's inside
- 10 problem sets · 1 lecture note · 1 reading · 36 other files · 4 web pages
- Materials open
- MIT OCW
About this course
Source: MIT OpenCourseWare 12.800 Fluid Dynamics of the Atmosphere and Ocean, Fall 2004, Prof. James Hansen — original course page on ocw.mit.edu ↗. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Study order: MIT's own listing order, section by section. Taken from MIT's published course files, downloaded from ocw.mit.edu on September 23, 2026. How RedLectern is built.
Materials are grouped the way MIT organized them. A verified, course-wide order has not been established here.
Before you start
Prerequisites are not listed here. Check MIT's own syllabus for this course.
How this course was organized
What's here, and what isn't
- A lecture sequence of 2 items is confirmed. It stays as organized materials rather than a full course order.
Not included here
3 items from the source could not be safely included:
- MIT's page format for this item wasn't recognized clearly enough to place it safely. (3 items)
Materials by section
Grouped by section, as MIT organized them. Not sequenced or ordered.
Lecture Notes
31 files
- Lecture 1 · Classroom activities Download
- Lecture 1 · Introduced the Instructor. Gave handout on kinematics. Went over the class description… · Notes Download
- Maths primer Briefly covered vector and tensor notation, vector and tensor algebra, wave… · Notes Download
- Lecture 2 · New Kinematics of Fluid Flow from Jim Price. Introduced Lagrangian and Eulerian… · Notes Download
- Lecture 3 · Introduced the Cauchy-Stokes decomposition theorem. Quantified how fluid motion may be… · Notes Download
- gexample1.zip Download
- G=[-1 6;1 -1] Download
- G=[-1 6;6 -1] Download
- G=[-3 6;-6 -1] Download
- Lecture 4 · Notes Download
- Lecture 5 · Spent a little more time on singular vectors, drawing the analogy between circular blobs… · Notes Download
- Lecture 6 · Distributed notes deriving the linear uncertainty propagator for a generic flow. Briefly… · Notes Download
- Lecture 7 · Pseudo-derived the simple, linear constitutive equation of Stokes and provided… · Notes Download
- Lecture 8 · Classroom activities Download
- Lecture 8 · Recap of the previous week, focusing on the Boussinesq approximation and the derivation… · Notes Download
- Lecture 9 · Returned to Boussinesq arguments about the energy equation. Demonstrated that the… · Notes Download
- Lecture 10 · Guest lecture by Jon Moskaitis. Derived the Bernoulli form by noting that the gravity… · Notes Download
- Lecture 11 · Another guest lecture by Jon Moskaitis. Introduced vorticity by analyzing a rotational… · Notes Download
- Lecture 12 · Long discussion on how to model interacting point vortices. Derived Kelvin’s Circulation… · Notes Download
- Lecture 13 · Introduced the Helmholtz vortex theorems and provided arm waving proofs. Derived the… · Notes Download
- Lecture 14 · Showed how to transform vectors between rotating and inertial frames. Used the… · Notes Download
- Lecture 15 · Began by deriving the period of inertial circles and comparing it with the period of the… · Notes Download
- Lecture 16 · Recapped the momentum and vorticity equations in the rotating frame. Did some scaling on… · Notes Download
- Lecture 17 · Produced the height-gradient form of the geostrophic velocity equations and provided many… · Notes Download
- Lecture 18 · Recapped inertial circles, geostrophy, gradient wind, and cyclostrophic wind. Next… · Notes Download
- Lecture 19 · Recapped inertial circles, geostrophy, gradient wind, cyclostrophic wind, isallobaric… · Notes Download
- Lecture 20 · Started with a quick recap of the mass transport in the Ekman layer, and provided an… · Notes Download
- Waves Primer Various forms of wave equations, definitions of wave number and frequency… · Notes Download
- Lecture 21 · Derived the fixed depth, barotropic, inviscid vorticity equation starting from Kelvin’s… · Notes Download
- Lecture 22 · Began by recapping the “recipe” for producing dispersion relations and performing… · Notes Download
- Lecture 24 · A day of gravity waves. Started from the shallow water equations sans rotation to produce… · Notes Download
Assignments
9 problem sets
Tools
- Supporting MATLAB? file (l63.m) Download
- Supporting MATLAB? file (lorenzeq.m) Download
- Supporting MATLAB? file (step_it.m) Download
Other materials from this course
Course outline
Calendar · Lecture Notes
Lecture 25: Final exam due
MIT OpenCourseWare, Prof. James Hansen, 12.800 Fluid Dynamics of the Atmosphere and Ocean, Fall 2004.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Edition: Fall 2004 · Open the original course on OCW ↗
Organized by RedLectern, independent of MIT and not endorsed by MIT.
Per-resource rights are recorded on each resource; All-Rights-Reserved items are link-only, never mirrored.
