Atmospheric and Ocean Circulations
MIT OpenCourseWare offers the full materials from this course on the physics driving motion in the atmosphere and ocean, spanning scales from meters to thousands of kilometers and from seconds to years. Building on the fluid dynamics covered in Physics of the Fluid Earth (12.003), the course brings in more mathematics, roughly the level used in elementary electromagnetic field theory, while keeping the emphasis on physical understanding rather than formal derivation. Topics include rotating fluid dynamics, geostrophic balance, waves, instabilities, and the large-scale circulation patterns that move heat and momentum through the climate system. The site provides lecture notes, problem sets, and exams as posted by the instructor, letting a self-directed learner work through the same material assigned to MIT students. No enrollment or certificate is offered through OpenCourseWare; the value is the complete set of course documents themselves, released under a Creative Commons license for independent study.