MIT OpenCourseWare

Browse materialsMIT 12.802 · Spring 2008

Wave Motion in the Ocean and the Atmosphere

Subjects: Engineering · Science

Art: Claes Janszoon Vooght, Ca. 1680 celestial chart by Claes Jansz Vooght, circa 1680 · Public domain

Instructor: Prof. Paola Rizzoli
Term: Spring 2008
Level: Graduate
What's inside: 9 problem sets · 1 lecture note · 13 other files · 3 web pages
Materials open: MIT OCW

Other versions of this course

12.802 · Spring 2008 · Study here (this version)
12.802 · Spring 2004 · Study here

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About this course

Source: MIT OpenCourseWare 12.802 Wave Motion in the Ocean and the Atmosphere, Spring 2008, Prof. Paola Rizzoli — 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

MIT's own materials here did not support a verified, course-wide order, so they are grouped by section instead.

Materials by section

Grouped by section, as MIT organized them. Not sequenced or ordered.

Lecture Notes

13 files

Assignments

9 problem sets

MIT OpenCourseWare, Prof. Paola Rizzoli, 12.802 Wave Motion in the Ocean and the Atmosphere, Spring 2008.

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Edition: Spring 2008 · Open the original course on OCW ↗

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Wave Motion in the Ocean and the Atmosphere

Before you start

What's here, and what isn't

Materials by section

Lecture Notes

Assignments

Lecture 1: Waves

Lecture 2: Slowly varying media: ray theory

Lecture 3: Surface gravity waves

Lecture 4: Energy equation

Lecture 5: Initial value problem — homogeneous medium

Lecture 6: Internal waves

Lecture 7: WKB theory for internal gravity waves — non rotating case

Lecture 8: Internal waves modified by rotation — unbounded fluid

Lecture 9: The oceanic wave guide: normal modes of a stratified, rotating fluid

Lecture 10: Unbounded domain — non rotating reflection from a solid boundary

Lecture 11: Laplace tidal equations on the sphere

Lecture 12: Shallow water equations with rotation — Poincaré waves

Lecture 13: The Kelvin wave

Lecture 14: Rossby or planetary waves

Lecture 15: Reflection and energetics of Rossby waves

Lecture 16: The equatorial wave guide

Lecture 17: The shelf problem and edge waves

Lecture 18: Coastal trapped waves

Lecture 19: Quasi-geostrophic potential vorticity equation in a stratified atmosphere

Lecture 20: Energetics with a mean flow for the ocean and atmosphere

Lecture 21: Topographically forced, steady Rossby waves with a zonal flow in an isothermal atmosphere

Lecture 22: Waves with a mean flow — ocean