Ocean 620 Ocean 620
Introduction to Physical Oceanography
Fall, 2003

Pierre Flament (MSB 503, x66663, pierre)
Eric Firing (MSB 416, x67894, efiring)
Mark Merrifield (MSB 317a, x66161, markm)
TA: Thomas Decloedt (MSB 219, x62418, decloedt)

Text

The text is Introduction to Physical Oceanography by Robert H. Stewart. It is available as a double-sided spiral-bound volume from Kinkos on King at University for under $30. Call them at 943 0005 and give a credit card number, or pay cash in person. The book will be printed on demand, so you may be able to get it while you wait (with patience), or you may need to go back the next day. If the person you talk to isn't sure what you are ordering, say it is on Docutech as ``Oceanography - Fall 2003'', for Eric Firing's UH class. If they still don't understand, ask to speak to Monique.

The text will be supplemented by notes that we will hand out occasionally. Most have been written by Eric Firing.

This is the first year we are using this text; it looks very good so far, but it is new to us, and we will be exploring how to make best use of it. It will be complementary to the lectures; we will not follow it in detail.

Web page

http://currents.soest.hawaii.edu/ocn620/ is the home page for this course at present. It includes a link to another page set up by Pierre Flament.

Topics

The following list is subject to change, both as to content and as to order of the topics!

  1. Introduction and overview: what PO is; how the ocean works; the classification of motions.

  2. Introduction to (or review of) coordinate systems and vectors; vector algebra: vector and scalar products; vector calculus: gradient, divergence, and curl.

  3. Description of fluid flow: Eulerian and Lagrangian descriptions; streamlines and trajectories; streamfunction.

  4. Intro to fluid dynamics: hydrostatic balance; conservation of mass (continuity equation).

  5. Review of elementary mechanics: Newton's laws; law of gravitation; kinetic and potential energy; simple harmonic oscillator; coupled oscillators.

  6. Momentum balance for a fluid; application to long gravity waves.

  7. The (primary) ultimate energy source: radiation balance; air-sea fluxes; greenhouse effect.

  8. The physics of non-radiative fluxes: advection; turbulence; Reynolds decomposition.

  9. The result of fluxes: general distribution of heat and salt in the ocean; thermoclines; water masses and types.

  10. Winds and upper-ocean currents.

  11. Fluid dynamics in a rotating system: centrifugal and Coriolis forces.

  12. Geostrophic balance: theory.

  13. Geostrophic calculations: practice.

  14. Ekman layers.

  15. Vorticity: introduction.

  16. Ekman convergence and divergence: the Sverdrup balance.

  17. Potential vorticity and western boundary currents.

  18. Observed WBCs compared to Sverdrup theory: recirculations, rings, and eddies.

  19. Water mass formation: North Atlantic Deep Water and Antarctic Bottom Water.

  20. Water mass formation: intermediate waters; convergence zones.

  21. Fine structure and turbulence.

  22. Deep circulation: theory; Stommel and Arons model; recent developments.

  23. Deep circulation: observations.

  24. Surface waves: classifications and characteristics; idealized waves; dispersion relation; refraction and dispersion.

  25. Surface waves: spectra; generation, nonlinear interaction, dissipation.

  26. Internal waves.

  27. Kelvin waves.

  28. Rossby waves.

  29. Tides: theory and observations.

  30. Equatorial circulation: observations and theory I.

  31. Equatorial circulation: observations and theory II.

  32. El Nino and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

  33. Coastal oceanography.

  34. Scale analysis; review of the main dynamic balances.

Topics may be added or deleted depending on the background and interests of class members; this is one of the benefits of our small class size. Topics as listed above do not always correspond to complete single lectures.

Examinations

The following may be modified after a week or two. There will be 2 midterms, no sooner than the last Friday in September and October. There will be a final examination. All three of these tests will involve a set of take-home questions, followed by a time scheduled outside of class when you will individually present one or more answers orally to one or more instructors. This format, originated by Pierre Flament, has served well as an evaluation tool, and, more importantly, as a teaching tool.

Readings and presentations

Reading assignments will be given on occasion, but it is your responsibility to read as needed; in many cases you will be the best judge of what you need to read to master the material.

We will assign short student presentations on selected readings or research projects. We will discuss strategy and timing with you in class.

Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics by Adrian Gill is an excellent text and reference. Although as a whole it is too advanced to be used as a primary text for this course, parts will probably be helpful to many students now, and it will be invaluable to those who continue their studies of physical oceanography or meteorology. Gill was a master; his book is widely cited and appreciated.

The book Ocean Circulation by the Open University course team may be helpful at the elementary level-if so, by all means use it. It has good graphics and attempts to be simple but reasonably modern.

Regional Oceanography: an Introduction by Tomczak and Godfrey is a very good source of primarily descriptive information. When I want to review what is known about a particular area, that is often where I start. Unfortunately, it is no longer available from Pergamon Press, but a revised edition is available in print or as pdf. See http://gaea.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/regoc/pdfversion.html.

Notes

For the majority of the lectures, we will provide ready-made notes. These will vary from simple outlines to something resembling excerpts from a text. Check with one of last year's students to see what last year's notes looked like and included. This year's will be similar, but as always we hope to fill in some gaps and make some improvements. The lectures will not correspond perfectly to the notes; the notes are important supplements. Please read them! If you don't understand something, discuss it with other students and/or with an instructor.

Problems and exercises

The following may be modified after a week or two. We will frequently give out study questions and problems to be solved. Try to work the simpler exercises by yourself, but if you get stuck, or for the harder questions, you are encouraged to work in groups; just be sure that you thoroughly understand anything you hand in. The purpose of these exercises is to help you understand the subject matter. They will be reviewed but not graded numerically. They may, however, be the most important part of the course-the most effective tool for learning about how the ocean works. (Although not graded, they are required and may carry some weight in determining your grade.)

Lectures

Please try to answer our questions, and please ask us questions if there is something we are saying that you don't understand. (We may occasionally have to defer long explanations or digressions in the interest of finishing on time.)

Computers

We encourage you to become proficient in using computers for writing, calculating, and plotting. You will have to learn sooner or later, so save yourself some trouble and make it sooner. We highly recommend a program called Matlab for most scientific calculation and plotting. It is available on many PCs and on the SOEST Sun network. It is very widely used in oceanography as well as in many other fields.

For producing documents, we use the LATEX formatting system, which is also available on the Sun network. LATEX is powerful (especially for equations), portable (I can refer you to a free implementation for Windows, for example), widely used (for example, for making theses and camera-ready journal articles) and free-but it is not always easy to use, and it takes a bit of time to learn.

Ask a student who uses Matlab and LATEX to introduce them to you.

Increasingly, we are incorporating computer-based exercises and material in this course. The Internet now provides ready access to recent data, plots, software, etc, and we will be taking advantage of it.

Mathematics

An important part of the language of physical oceanography is vector calculus, with which some of you may not yet be familiar. We cannot provide a full course in vector calculus, and we will not require you to learn it well enough to solve complex problems. But we will introduce the basic concepts and symbols, and we will expect you to learn them well enough to understand their physical meaning and perform some simple calculations.

Experience has shown that a strong mathematical background is not essential for doing well in this course; but a student with such a background should be able to get more out of the course than one without.

Goals

By the end of this course, we expect all students to be familiar with the main features of the world ocean circulation and hydrography, with the main classes of ocean waves, with other important processes such as mixing, and with the dynamic balances that govern these phenomena and processes. We recognize that we will be covering a broad area and introducing many new and sometimes unintuitive concepts. Just do your best, and rest assured that your exposure to these concepts, and the effort you put into understanding them, will be worthwhile so long as you pursue your interest in oceanography.

In addition to learning facts and concepts, you should gain some skills such as the following:

In other words, the goal is not just to know some things, but to be able to do something with what you know.

One more goal: have fun!

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On 22 Jan 2004, 11:36.