Meteorology 454 - Wave Analysis Project Report

Some guidelines for witing a good report:

Among other things the report should include:

1. An abstract. The abstract should include
   • A one-sentence motivation for the work
   • A summary of the data collected
   • A brief description of the analyses performed
   • The major conclusions
   The abstract should be no more than a paragraph. When presented by itself (as on your portfolio page), it should be preceeded by the paper's title and list of authors.
2. Introduction motivating the topic
3. Description of data sources, their accuracy and their limitations.
   
   • These would include your "observational" methods
4. Desciption of atmospheric waves data (fields, period covered, domain covered for your project, etc.)
5. Analysis procedures and tools, e.g.,
   • any averaging
   • linear regression (highly recommended where appropriate for answering questions!)
   • and any other sort of data procesessing you performed
6. Results
   • Behavior of waves with respect to the guiding questions
   • Behavior of zonal flow with respect to the guiding questions
7. Intrepretation of results
   • The issue for interpretation is not simply whether or not the the simple Rossby-wave theory matches observations, but the degree to which is agrees with observations and what aspects of the theory agree better than others.
   • The interpretation should also include some consideration of factors that limit the simple theory with respect to the real-world behavior, limitations of the "observing" and analysis procedures, and possible factors that limit the accuracy of the observed fields.
   • The interpretation should thus be such that another person could do research on the same topic in the future and build upon your experience.

In other words, your report should be structured like a published scientific paper.

Some further pointers for a good paper:

• Present graphs clearly, with appropriate labels (including units) and title.

• Number graphs, and identify appropriately when referenced in the text.

• Look at evidence objectively and say when observations do not coincide with simple theory. Don't force the fit.

• Make sure terms like "long wave" are clearly defined.

• Think about (and discuss) what is physically causing the behaviors you observe.

• Note that my questions are the minimum that should be addressed with their data. You should feel free to do more!

• Consider computing correlations and making line (or other) fits to the data.

• For similar plots, e.g., U500 vs wave speed, try to use the same axis scales in both the NH and SH .

• Look at governing equations (e.g., dispersion relationship) on the theory and ask how well the data corresponds to the physically based equations.

• Number pages.