Detailed Outline
[Numbers in brackets give chapters to read in Des (Descriptive
Physical Oceanography, 5th Ed.), and Dyn (Introductory Dynamical
Oceanography, 2nd Ed.). Lectures do not cover the entirety of all
chapters assigned; students will only be responsible for material
covered in lectures.]
- Properties of seawater, observational methods
[Des 2, 3, 6]
- composition
- equation of state
- instruments and platforms:
T, S, pressure, velocity, sea surface
- T-S Forcing and conservation laws
[Des 5]
- heat flux components
- heat flux distribution
- evaporation, precipitation, runoff
- box models
- Global T-S distribution
[Des 4, water mass sections in 7]
- surface profiles
- vertical profiles
- water masses
- Fluid dynamics on rotating sphere
[Dyn 6, 8, 9.1-9.4]
- Coriolis force
- equations of motion
- geostrophy
- Ekman layers
- Description of large-scale gyres
[Des 7]
- wind patterns and gyres
- western and eastern boundary currents
- polar currents
- equatorial currents
- Barotropic dynamics of large-scale gyres
[Dyn 9.5-9.14]
- vorticity dynamics
- gyres and western boundary currents
- Sverdrup, Stommel, and Munk
- Large-scale overturning
[To Be Announced]
- thermohaline structure and meridional overturning
- advective-diffusive balance and overturning
- Stommel-Arons patterns
- subduction and shallow cells
- Surface gravity waves (nonrotating and rotating)
[Dyn 12.1-12.8, 12.10.1-12.10.3]
- short and long nonrotating SGWs
- Poincare and Kelvin waves
- nonlinear effects
- Tides
[Dyn 13.1-13.7]
- tidal forcing
- equilibrium theory
- forced response
- Internal gravity waves
[Dyn 12.9]
- two-layer fluid
- rotational effects
- continuous fluid
- Mixing, turbulence, surface layer
[To Be Announced]
- descriptive Kelvin-Helmholtz instability
- surface mixed layer dynamics
- sources of subsurface mixing
- Rossby waves, instability and mesoscale eddies
[To Be Announced]
- Rossby wave dynamics
- observations of eddies
- Coastal processes: currents, fronts, estuaries
[Des 8]
- El Nino
[To Be Announced]
- air-sea feedbacks
- equatorial waveguide
- ENSO description
Return to Course Description
Brief Course Outline
Last modified: Aug 28, 2002