Physical Oceanography Division

Purpose and Description

The faculty and staff of the Physical Oceanography Division are dedicated to providing superior graduate education and are involved in leading edge research in physical oceanography and on the physical impact of the oceans on the atmosphere. The Division's graduates have gone on to successful careers in academia, government and industry.

The Division's members include internationally recognized leaders in physical oceanographic research. Research activities range from small-scale internal waves to the general circulation of the oceans and its effect on climate, and from seagoing observation programs to theoretical modeling and computer simulations. The Division includes a nationally-mandated Sea Level Center (UHSLC) that maintains tide gauges and sea level archives from the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Division members are studying the complementary uses of tide gauge and satellite altimetry data, and their application to problems concerning ocean circulation variability. Satellite imagery is collected and archived locally by the Satellite Oceanography Laboratory (SatLab) for worldwide distribution and for studies by Division and Department faculty and students. The Division boasts the first archive in the world for shipboard Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements of the ocean's currents; this is a joint effort with the U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center. ADCP current measurements have become derigueur on research cruises where accurate estimates of currents from the surface to the sea floor are required byproducts of standard hydrographic observations.

Research on climate variability and prediction is growing rapidly. Division researchers have been participating in the climate-oriented World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) field and analysis phases, and were instrumental in establishing the WOCE Hawaii Ocean Time-Series ( HOT) program for long-term monthly monitoring of temperature, salinity, and biogeochemical variables at a site north of Oahu. Division researchers provided critical leadership and field experiments in the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) component of the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program. Through funding from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate and Global Change Program, Division researchers established the Klaus Wyrtki Center for Climate Research and Prediction (WCCRP) to study the role of the Asian-Australian monsoons in the seasonal to interannual variability of climate in the Indian and Pacific Ocean sectors. Currently being established is the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) that will focus on climate variability and prediction in eastern Asia. Funding for this center is being provided by Japan and the U.S. NASA and NOAA.

For more information on the broad range of research interests of Division members, see the web pages for individual PO Division members and the web pages listed below under Research WWW Servers. From these pages you can also find members' publication lists. For general information on the graduate degree programs offered by the Department of Oceanography, including the physical oceanography program, see the Department's Home Page.

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