Turbulence in the Ocean and Atmosphere
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this advanced course on turbulence in Earth's oceans and atmosphere, covering motions from centimeter scale to planetary scale. Topics include homogeneous isotropic three dimensional turbulence, convection, boundary layer turbulence, internal waves, two dimensional turbulence, quasi-geostrophic turbulence, and macroturbulence in both ocean and atmospheric settings. The course presents the underlying phenomena, theoretical frameworks, and modeling approaches used to study each regime. Materials are drawn from MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and made available freely through OpenCourseWare, with no certificate offered. The course suits students who already have a background in fluid dynamics and want a systematic treatment of turbulence across scales relevant to geophysical systems, from small scale mixing to large scale circulation patterns.